When St. Francis voted to return to the former Minnesota state flag early this year, city leaders framed the decision as a message to state officials Months later, that message has echoed across the state, with more than a dozen cities choosing to fly the former design or keep it displayed in city buildings.
Supporters of the former flag say the issue is less about the image itself than the process used to replace it. They argue voters should have had a direct say before Minnesota retired a flag that had flown in some form for generations.
Critics say the former flag and seal carried imagery long criticized as offensive to Native Americans. The former flag included the previous state seal, which depicted a Native American on horseback and a white settler plowing a field. The Minnesota Historical Society traces the territorial seal artwork to 1849, and the former state flag incorporated the Great Seal of Minnesota beginning with the state’s first flag in 1893.
The current flag was adopted May 11, 2024. The flag includes a dark blue shape representing Minnesota, a white eight-pointed star based on the star in the Capitol Rotunda and a bright blue field representing water. The State Emblems Redesign Commission received 2,128 flag design submissions before selecting a concept created by Andrew Prekker and modifying it.
The St. Francis City Council directed staff Jan. 5 to review the city’s flag inventory and determine whether there would be a cost associated with changing flags. At its Jan. 20 meeting, the council voted 5-0 to approve a resolution stating the city would not fly or display the current Minnesota state flag until there was a statutory change or a statewide vote.
St. Francis Mayor Mark Vogel said the vote was intended to make a point to state leaders.
“I don’t think we’ve got their attention yet,” Vogel said. “It’s a big fingerpointing game and it’s going nowhere.”
Vogel believes the decision to change the state flag should have gone to voters, adding that he saw it as similar to changing the name of the state.
St. Francis council member Amy Faanes said the decision would eventually be well-received in the city.
“I hear a lot about it on social media, and I feel like it would make our citizens happy,” Faanes said.
St. Francis council member Kevin Robinson said he believed a few people had made the decision to create a new design for the entire state.
Other cities have since taken similar action, either changing their flags back or formally backing the former design they never removed.
At its April 20 meeting, the Ham Lake City Council approved a resolution to support flying the former Minnesota state flag, which can still be seen in the council chambers. Ham Lake’s resolution calls the former state flag a symbol of the state and its history.
Ham Lake council member Jim Doyle said a resolution in support of the former flag was the most permanent way to keep it up because a future council would have to take its own action to change course. Ham Lake City Attorney Mark Berglund recommended adding language explaining why the council was doing it.
The Inver Grove Heights City Council voted 3-2 April 27 to switch back to the former flag, according to MPR News. Inver Grove Heights council member Sue Gliva called the flag a nod to Minnesota’s past.
“I think it’s very important, even symbolically, to represent the flag that I feel represents our history,” Gliva said.
The meeting included a debate over whether the issue belonged before the council. Inver Grove Heights council member Tony Scales said he believed it should be left to the state.
“This issue falls outside the scope of our responsibilities, no matter how we each might feel about the flag and as a member of the City Council,” Scales said. “Our mandate is to serve the needs of the community.”
The Elk River City Council moved toward flying the former flag after a resident survey came back in favor of the change.
Elk River Mayor John Dietz raised the idea after hearing from multiple constituents. Of the 1,100 survey respondents, 74.6% supported displaying the former flag, while 24.4% preferred the current flag.
“I don’t think we have ever gotten 1,100 emails on any topic in my 32 years,” Dietz said. “The citizens of Elk River have spoken.”
Elk River resident Joyce Klegon, who spoke during the city’s public forum, said not flying the current flag would show a lack of unity.
“It further divides us as a state,” Klegon said. “And I think the old flag is historic, and I think we will preserve it in our history books and in museums.”
Elk River resident Jan Filer said she was disappointed and saw the council’s job as creating unity.
“This is our state flag,” Filer said. “Fly it proudly. Support the state. Don’t create more divisiveness.”
But Elk River resident Linda Schultz, who said her family had immigrant roots dating back to her grandfather, spoke in favor of the former flag’s heritage and values.
“The new flag has nothing to do with Minnesota, and does not represent any of our values,” Schultz said.
Dietz concluded by directing staff to return with a formal resolution on the consent agenda approving the flying of the former flag.
In Spring Lake Park, the City Council approved displaying the former state flag on city grounds in a split 3-2 vote.
Spring Lake Park Mayor Bob Nelson said many cities had started doing the same thing. He said the city had received testimony from residents and from others who were concerned.
“We beat it to death pretty good at the workshop,” Nelson said, “so I ain’t too inclined to go too much farther.”
During the workshop, Nelson said, both sides cited personal views for and against the flag. He said he would try to keep politics out of the decision because there was support for the former flag within the city.
Spring Lake Park council member April Moran contested Nelson’s account, saying the city had received many emails from people opposed to the switch.
“People have stood up to say it, and I myself am also against it,” Moran said.
Spring Lake Park council member Lisa Dirks said she was concerned that three council members believed they could push the item forward with three days’ notice.
“I don’t think that’s right,” Dirks said. “The complaint that was stated in the work session was that they didn’t get enough input in the state’s decision. … We have input from community members saying they were aware of it and voted on it.”
Dirks said trying to switch flags nearly two years after the current flag’s adoption was ridiculous.
Spring Lake Park council member Barbara Goodroe-Bischoff said she did not like that a commission had made the decision on the flag and said the issue was important enough to go to voters in a general election.
“I think our city should also say the same thing: It wasn’t right,” Goodroe-Bischoff said.
Several other cities have taken similar action. Hill City voted April 14 to fly the former flag, according to ECM reporting. Baldwin approved flying the former state flag March 18, and Wahkon approved a resolution to fly the former flag after discussion at its March meeting. Champlin voted 3-2 Feb. 23 to continue flying the former flag, while Janesville voted unanimously April 27 to fly the former flag at City Hall.
In Janesville, council member Ivan Maas said residents wanted to return to the former flag and said the redesign process was inadequate.
“For me, the new flag wasn’t put in place properly,” Maas said. “The citizens were allowed the opportunity to design a new flag, they kind of picked their top winner, and then it went back into committee and was changed severely.”
In other cities, the current Minnesota state flag continues to fly.
In Nowthen, the council voted 3-2 Feb. 10 to continue flying the current Minnesota state flag. The council rejected a motion by Nowthen council member Ken Glaser to remove both the current and former versions from city property.
Nowthen Mayor Shane Hybben and council members Mary Rainville and Dan Swenson voted against the motion.
Glaser, who previously raised the issue in November 2025, argued the redesign process was partisan and said the city should not fly a state flag unless a bipartisan process produced a new design.
“Over 70% of Nowthen voters from both precincts did not get representation in the redesign of their state flag,” Glaser said.
Glaser said the issue had become political and city government is intended to be nonpartisan. He added that many Minnesotans are dissatisfied with both the current design and the process used to adopt it.
Swenson said removing the flag would itself be a partisan act.
“It is the Minnesota state flag,” Swenson said. “You leave the Minnesota state flag up on the flag pole. … I would feel, you know, if we pull that down, what’s to stop us from having some Trump hater say take down the American flag, or put up, you know, a Confederate flag or put up a rainbow flag?”
Rainville said she identifies as a Democrat and has political views that do not always align with many conservative residents, but said she does not let that influence her decisions on the council.
“I’m a Democrat — I was born and raised a Democrat,” Rainville said, adding that voters have continued to elect her because they separate personal politics from local governance.
Nowthen council member Dan Breyen said he had read about a Rochester flag maker who reported customers buying new flags as an act of protest.
“I do not want the city of Nowthen to be represented as protest and defiance,” Breyen said, adding that tradition alone was not a sufficient reason to continue flying the former flag.
Hybben said he personally disagreed with how the redesign process unfolded and would have preferred a statewide vote, but said the council’s role was not to weigh in on that debate.
“Part of being nonpartisan is not worrying about any of that,” Hybben said.
For Vogel, putting up the former flag came down largely to history and process.
“I recognize that the Legislature legally can do it, I don’t think that’s democratic,” Vogel said. “Simply put it to the vote of the people.”
Vogel said the flag decision also became a way to push back on state mandates that have drawn scrutiny from cities such as St. Francis, including election administration and housing density regulations. He said he could see how someone might view the flag decision as partisan, but he did not see it that way.
“It’s simply something that the city can opt out of, of all the edicts that have been put in place — something we don’t have to bow to,” Vogel said.
Iona Wydralak, a cultural consultant in Coon Rapids and an Ojibwe elder, said she does not like the design of the current flag.
“They oversimplified it,” Wydralak said. “If you look at it, what does it represent?”
Wydralak said she preferred some elements of the former flag, including its historical detail and the “L’Etoile du Nord” inscription, a reference to the North Star. She said she liked the idea of bringing back the former flag but adding images such as wild rice, a loon or Ojibwe dwellings.
“I’m not politically motivated by any of it,” Wydralak said. “It’s ridiculous to say that it’s partisan or has anything to do with right or left or red or blue or anything like that. The flag represents the state, not the politics.”
Columbia Heights Mayor Amáda Márquez Simula, whose city was one of the first to fly the current flag design in 2023, said she had been concerned about what she called the racist nature of the former flag since moving to Minnesota.
“I watched the very public process of going through reiterations with different artists and organizers on the new state flag,” Simula said. “I was part of the public vote for the flag. I thought they did a great job with being transparent and inclusive to anyone.”
Simula, referencing Mary Henderson Eastman’s 1850 poem that served as the basis for the seal’s imagery, said people who wanted the former flag to represent their own idea of what the state is supposed to be believed what that poem said.
“They must believe really strongly what it stands for,” Simula said. “Her poem has a clear definition of what that seal stood for.”
While some councils likely did not realize what they were signaling, Simula said, she believes cities that made the switch knew what they were doing by refusing to move forward in accepting “the Minnesota that is.”
“Honestly, I liken it to the Confederacy flag,” Simula said. “The flag that represents the past.”
State Sen. Mary Kunesh, who supported the 2023 legislation that created the redesign commission, said the state used a public process that drew more than 2,100 submissions and included representation from the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs, the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage and legislative appointees.
Kunesh said Mary Eastman, whose poem helped inspire the former state seal, was descended from a family of slaveowners in Northern Virginia and wrote about white men taking over the land while Native Americans fled.
“I don’t know that people really understand the significance of the images on the old flag,” Kunesh said. “And the hurt and the pain that is depicted there of Indigenous people. … And maybe they don’t want to understand it, it’s a sign of resistance in their own way.”
Kunesh said the main reasons she has heard for cities switching come down to two arguments: that people liked the former image and did not want it changed, and that Minnesotans never got to vote on the current flag.
“That would have been a really costly, kind of complicated way to do it,” Kunesh said. “And when you look at the makeup of the committee, and the people on it, we had so many committees open to the public. We put those submissions out. People could come to the Capitol and look.”
On April 27, a bill was introduced in the Minnesota House that would reduce aid to cities and counties that use the former state flag. The bill would direct the commissioner of revenue to reduce aid by 10% if a city or county flies or otherwise uses a state flag other than the design certified in the State Emblems Redesign Commission report. The bill would take effect with aids payable in 2027.
The bill was introduced as HF 5077 by Rep. Mike Freiberg and other DFL House members. House Speaker Lisa Demuth wrote on X that the bill was “dead on arrival.”
“There is no way this bill is moving through,” Demuth wrote. “To know that Democrats are trying to take funding away from our police and fire, from our cities, it’s ridiculous. We have real work that could help Minnesotans.”
Kunesh said she carried companion legislation in the Senate.
“(Rep. Mike) Freiberg and I were a part of this,” Kunesh said. “It’s important that municipalities respect the decision that was made. I stand by it.”
The former Minnesota state flag was based on versions that dated to 1893. It was redesigned in 1957 and later modified in 1983.
The former seal was based on a design by Army Capt. Seth Eastman from an earlier sketch by Col. James W. Abert at the request of Gov. Alexander Ramsey and delegate Henry Sibley. The seal depicted a Native American riding westward as a white settler plowed a field with a rifle leaning against a stump.
According to reporting by the Associated Press, Minnesota’s 11 federally recognized Dakota and Ojibwe tribes have described the imagery as offensive, while flag design experts have criticized the design as overly complex.
The state Legislature adopted the current flag following recommendations from the State Emblems Redesign Commission, citing concerns about symbolism and design clarity.
AMM editors Jim Boyle, Kat Robb, Chloe Smith, Bob Statz and Stacy Dahl all contributed to this report. Estelle Timar-Wilcox covered the Inver Grove Heights matter for MPR News.