New Minnesota’s New Flag

Somalia gets closer to home

Minnesota entered the Union in 1858. In 1862, the Sioux Indians attacked Fort Ridgley, an Army outpost on the Minnesota River, and slaughtered every man there. From there they moved to nearby towns and proceeded to rape and murder everyone in them. Conservative estimates place casualties at 750 dead, though estimates in the thousands are not inappropriate. The Indians' formal grievance was over the terms of treaty, but the story is essentially of "economic factors." The Federal Government doesn't give us enough, ergo we can’t really be blamed for the rape and murder we commit in response.

The Army in mid-1862 had pressing obligations apart from the uncultivated prairie. By the time the white man was able to muster up a response, all remnants of civilized people had been chased from the prairie. The troops that eventually arrived was a pretty hapless bunch. When camped near Birch-Coulee, not far from the Minnesota River, they found that their ammunition was too big for their rifles. If the Indians had been wise, they would have attacked immediately, and the Battle of Birch-Coulee would have been an absolute rout. Instead, they dawdled; the soldiers were able to whittle their bullets down to useable form, and when the Indians did attack the Americans were able to put up a fight. The Sioux were put to flight by reinforcements by former Territorial Governor Henry Sibley. The retreat was one they continued westward until Wounded Knee, and the two centuries of war was ended.

Of all American states, probably only Texas can compete with the bloodiness of Minnesota's founding. The once-martial status quo on the prairie is now largely mocked. Stop by historical markers where remote forts once stood and you find plaques poking fun at the local militia's preparedness. The names of heroes from the 1862 war like Sibley, Flandreau, and Faribault are still written all over the state. The legacy of these men probably benefits from being unknown, or their names would have been removed years ago. "Economic reasons" have largely washed the blood from the Indians' hands.

The Minnesota flag provides oblique testament to the heroism on which the state was founded. In the foreground of the central seal is a farmer cultivating the land, and behind him is an Indian, apparently riding west. If you asked nine out of ten Minnesotans who call the flag genocidal why it's genocidal, they wouldn't be able to tell you. If the Indian were pointed right, it wouldn't be genocidal, but it would probably be racist because the Indian's attacking the farmer. And of course if you simply removed the Indian you would be committing an act of genocide yourself. You just can't win with some people and, as Governor Ramsey knew long ago, you can't live with them either.

I've always liked the Minnesotan flag. The bright royal blue pairs up well yet also contrasts with the Stars and Bars directly above it. The state seal is overloaded, yet is still charming: The farmer in his field, the landscape that seems to encompass the entire state, the ladyslippers and the stars. The Minnesotan flag reminds me of Canada's Red Ensign flag, in use until the 1960s: Stark royal color and an overstuffed coat of arms. Outsiders and cynics can complain about the flags from an aesthetic standpoint, but the old Canadian flag and the Minnesotan flag shared one characteristic: People who love the place like the flag.

Now the Canadian flag is a big stupid leaf. Minnesota’s new flag looks like a spearmint ad. It bears a striking resemblance to the flag from a state in Somalia.

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I doubt the new flag’s creator from Luverne, Minnesota had this in mind. Modern people have no great symbols, nothing that could form the basis for allegory or historical representation like the old state flag. And per the creator’s own words, the green is grass, the blue is water, the white is snow. What would an illiterate Somali have done differently? The new flag looks Somalian because all forms of savagery tend to resemble one another, and the modern Minnesotan is so illiterate to his past and to his own civilization that he is little better than the burqa’s morons brought in to replace him.

Different flags represent different places, and no one is bound to pretend that Minnesota of today is the same place as it was twenty or ten or five years ago. The silver lining is that we are given a visible form of the difference, and an emblem of what victory looks like: When our old flags are flown once again.