Minnesota’s new state flag should feature an eight-pointed North Star against a dark blue background shaped like the state, with a solid light blue field at the right, a special commission decided Tuesday as it picked a replacement for an older design that many Native Americans considered offensive.
The State Emblems Redesign Commission chose the final version on an 11-1 vote after finalizing a new state seal that depicts a loon, the state bird. Unless the Legislature rejects them, the new flag and seal will automatically become official April 1, 2024, when Minnesota observes Statehood Day.
The star echoes Minnesota’s state motto of “Star of the North.” The commission’s chairman, Luis Fitch, said that to him, the light blue represents the Mississippi River, “the most important river in the United States,” pointing to the North Star. But he acknowledged it could mean other things to other people. Symmetry and simplicity won out over other versions, including ones that included a green stripe for the state’s agricultural heritage.
There really isn’t any “before all that” though. Especially that far west. Along the east coast there might have been a generation of “we just want to escape weligious pewsecution and gwow cown uwu 👉👈🥺” but the first permanent settlement in Minnesota was in 1852, 7 years after the phrase “manifest destiny” was coined. Minnesota was established during the era where the prevailing belief of white Americans was that God commanded them to take all of America for themselves and anyone who tried to stop them was to be destroyed.