2023-12-13 00:45:00
A commission tasked with redesigning Minnesota’s state flag knocked half the finalists out of the competition on Tuesday, advancing three distinct designs that all bear image of the North Star.
Three of the other finalists will now fall away as the State Emblems Redesign Commission races toward a Jan. 1 deadline to finalize a new design for both Minnesota’s flag and the official seal of government. Neither has been substantially redesigned since first created more than 100 years ago.
The designs chosen by the group will become the basis for the next state flag, with commission members able to tweak everything from colors to shapes in the final design.
“The flag is not meant to be a collection of symbols that are readily identifiable; rather their use following adoption makes that image synonymous with the state,” said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a member of the commission. “It’s not just regarding a grab bag of symbols, it’s regarding what is the symbol going forward that we want to identify with Minnesota.”
The finalists include a state flag bearing an abstract shape of Minnesota’s borders, another featuring a flowing wave and the North Star, and another showing mirroring water and snow that also includes loons hidden in the design.
They’re running low on time. The 13-member commission, which was created by the Legislature last session, has until Jan. 1 to present new designs for the state flag and seal to lawmakers.
Last week, the commission picked a finalist among the state seal designs, choosing an image of a loon posed on one of Minnesota’s lakes.
On Tuesday, members adopted tweaks to the final seal design, including making the eyes of the loon red and removing the state’s official motto — “L ‘etoile du nord,” or the star of the north. Commission members disagreed on whether the motto should be in another language or its original French and opted to leave it off entirely.
After much debate, the commission also voted to remove the date and year Minnesota became a state from the seal. Two Native American members on the commission noted that 1858 also signifies the signing of treaties that ceded much the state’s land over to settlers.
“We don’t need it on the seal to remind us,” echoed commission member Anita Gaul, a college history professor from southern Minnesota. “Just like we don’t need words on the United States flag to remind us it’s the United States flag.”
Several members also pushed to include Dakota language on the seal, pointing out that the word Minnesota is derived from the Dakota Mni Sota Makoce, meaning “Land Where the Waters Reflect the Clouds.”
Minnesota should be “thinking regarding the first language of this land” and “paying respect to that longer history” in its state seal, said commission member Kate Beane, a Dakota woman who spent years as director of Native American Initiatives for the Minnesota Historical Society.
Some members opposed the move, noting state law authorizing the commission says any “symbols, emblems, or likenesses that represent only a single community or person … may not be included in a design” and the change might open the new state seal up to potential legal challenges.
“Do we or do we not want taxpayer dollars defending this decision here?” said Republican Rep. Bjorn Olson, a nonvoting member of the commission. “This is controversial. This is on the line.”
The 13-member commission was created by the Legislature last session to come up with a new design for the flag and seal, which have been criticized for decades as offensive to the state’s tribal communities.
The seal, which is at the center of the state flag, shows a white settler plowing a field in the foreground while a Native American man rides on horseback into the sunset. Others have criticized the flag as poorly designed and too similar to other state flags that also have a seal at the center.
The public has become deeply invested in the process, submitting more than 2,600 flag and seal designs to the commission. The public has left more than 20,000 comments on the final flag and seal design finalists.
If the Legislature doesn’t veto the final designs, the new state flag will start flying on Statehood Day on May 11.
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