Tolkkinen: Minnesota has become a state with two flags

DETROIT LAKES, MINN. - Minnesota adopted a new state flag this year in the hope that it would unite all Minnesotans.

Instead, like COVID masks and profane political signs, the state flag illustrates our political divides. We have become a state of two separate flags.

Across greater Minnesota, the old state flag, with its depiction of a Native American riding into the sunset while a white man farms in the foreground, still hangs in many city council chambers and community halls and waves above homes and businesses.

While the new flag, adopted on May 11, has made inroads into greater Minnesota, especially into courtrooms, where it was mandated, the old flag commands significant loyalty.

"It was a beautiful depiction of what Minnesota is. We have a Native American culture. We have farmers. It is the history of this area," said Tami Olson of Fergus Falls, who said her husband hurried to buy the old flag once the new flag was announced.

America has been struggling with how to deal with the symbols of a past that harmed many people, and Minnesota has not been spared.

It's fair to say that the old state flag reflected the reality of the 1800s. As logging and railroad barons plundered the state, and European settlers moved in, the state's Indigenous people did lose power. They lost ancestral lands that they depended on for their livelihoods. After the U.S.-Dakota war of 1862, many Dakota people were driven from the state. Indigenous children were forced into boarding schools. Today, more than a quarter of Native Americans in Minnesota live in poverty.

Arguably now, more than at any time in our state's history, Minnesotans see that and understand the massive loss and trauma endured by Indigenous people. Simply changing a flag doesn't fix that, but those who felt their oppression reflected in the flag no longer chafe under that demeaning symbol.

It's easy to dismiss people in greater Minnesota who continue to hang onto the old flag as stubborn conservatives who would reject any proposal that came out of the Twin Cities. Some of that is true, and that inclination has been exploited by political leaders who would rather divide our state than graciously accept defeat.

It's also easy to see the frantic rally around the old flag as the fearful acts of a majority group that is losing power as demographics shift locally and nationally.

Some of that is true, too. But it doesn't tell the whole story.

Neither do the reasons rural Minnesotans offer for opposing the flag. Amanda Thorson, the clerk-treasurer for the city of Ottertail, which still flies the old flag, cited cost as one concern, as cities and counties would incur significant costs to update the seals on law enforcement vehicles. Opponents at a Becker County Commission meeting in February said they felt rural counties weren't sufficiently consulted.

Opposition goes much, much deeper than cost. And arguing that rural areas weren't included seems like a stretch when Minnesota held a statewide contest to redesign the flag, and the winning designer was a resident of Luverne, population 4,855, in the southwest corner of the state.

The sting, I think, is feeling like they are being erased from history.

Many rural white Minnesotans farm or are closely connected to farming. Their ancestors arrived here not speaking English, driven across the ocean by hunger or poverty or war. While hundreds of thousands of settlers got Minnesota land for free through the Homestead Act of 1864, many other immigrants bought their land from the government or the railroad, paying $1.25 an acre starting in 1841. They had hard lives. You can walk through old cemeteries and see how many children died of disease or accidents, often many in one family. A written history of Clitherall, the closest town to our family, describes houses getting so cold at night that the bread would freeze, and the family would have to steam it in the morning. As late as the 1950s, children in my area were riding to a one-room school in a horse-drawn sleigh.

The farmer in the old state flag could have been an ancestor of many people in our area.

I can see that they might feel, like the Native man riding into the sunset, that they are being written out of history.

In rural areas, empathy sometimes feels like a weakness. That's changing, but there's still a tough, "get-over-it" attitude in my neck of the woods. On food stamps? Get a job. Upset about how your ancestors were treated? Hey, this is 2024. Move on. (As long as we're not moving on from the old flag.)

That attitude would never win elections in the Twin Cities. But it works in some — not all — rural, white-dominated areas where people still remember hard times but have never faced oppression as people of color.

In February, Becker County commissioners passed a resolution opposing the new flag, joining a group of greater Minnesota counties that include Douglas, Crow Wing, Wadena, McLeod, Houston, Nobles, Brown and Mower.

Still, there are places that have opened the door to the new flag, including the cities of Perham and Battle Lake.

Perham City Clerk Heather Hoeft said she ordered the new flag thinking it was mandatory (it isn't), and nobody has yet commented on the change.

Battle Lake Mayor Rich Bullard said nobody in his city has talked about it, either. He declined to comment directly on the matter, saying instead that Battle Lake is conservative but also mindful that it is a tourist town.

"Most people here appreciate the tourist trade that we get and know there's got to be a give-and-take," he said.

Speaking of give-and-take, here's a question opponents of the new flag might ask themselves: Is hanging onto the past more important than embracing the future?