REGIONAL— The culture wars apparently have a new hot button in Minnesota that the state’s GOP is hoping to press to organize their voters and raise badly-needed funds. The state’s newly-redesigned flag has been greeted with yawns from most Minnesotans since its official adoption last month, but some Republicans have been hoping to use it as a wedge issue to drive dissatisfaction with DFL lawmakers who pushed for the redesign.
A new web page, called Save the Flag has been posted on the Minnesota Republican Party website and hawks a variety of t-shirts with messages calling for retaining the old flag.
The state flag has long been criticized as virtually indistinguishable from many other state flags, many of which have featured a state seal of some kind on a background of varying shades of blue. It’s also been described as racially tinged given its depiction of a white farmer plowing the prairie and a single horse-mounted Native American riding into the sunset. Some commentary on the seal from the era of its creation suggests the symbolism was intended to show white settlers driving out Native Americans and their culture from the state.
The fine detail in the state seal made it largely meaningless incorporated into a flag at the top of a flagpole, which was one reason the longtime flag, first created in the late 1800s, has been roundly panned by flag aficionados. Ted Kaye, who represents the North American Vexillological Association, an organization devoted to flags and flag design, gives the new flag high marks. Kaye, who wrote the book, “Good Flag, Bad Flag,” told PBS News Weekend that he’d rank Minnesota’s new flag in the top ten among states. Kaye told PBS that state flags are changing both to remove offensive symbolism and to improve the branding of states.
But not everyone is on board with that goal, calling it “woke” and Republicans are hoping to tap into that resentment over the issue to garner political support. Republican Party Chair David Hann and Deputy Chair Donna Bergstrom released a statement earlier this month calling on the Legislature to reject the new flag.
Bergstrom, a member of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe, sought to flip the script by suggesting the new design discounted Native Americans.
“As a Native American and tribal member, it is exhausting to see Native Americans once again bearing the brunt of the short-sighted eradication of our shared history,” Bergstrom said. “Keeping the current flag would have been a powerful acknowledgment from the Walz administration and the DFL that our Native contributions are valued.”
That view was challenged by fellow Aaron Wittnebel, himself a Red Lake band member who served on the State Flag State Emblems Redesign Committee in a recent commentary that first appeared on Minnpost and was republished in the 1/19 edition of the Timberjay. He notes that Minnesota’s first governor, Henry Sibley, who designed the former state seal without legislative approval, wrote at the time that it was meant to symbolize Manifest Destiny, which was a 19th century belief that white settlers were destined by God to expand their dominion across North America. The view, which has since fallen out of favor, held that whites were inherently superior to Native Americans and that it was America’s mission and duty to remake the West in the image of the eastern U.S.
It remains unclear what impact the GOP action might have, since the new flag is now official and no further action is required by the Legislature.