What I associate with Minnesota's flag

My letter to the editor of the Faribault Daily News:

The current flag of Minnesota is the State Seal on a blue background. The seal depicts an indigenous Minnesotan in the distance while a settler turns the native land into farmland. Both are armed.

When I look at this symbol, I can only think of its history--both what it represents and how it became the symbol for our state. Governor Henry Sibley is most responsible for our current flag: personally advocating for this design and overruling the legislature to keep it as our seal.

This is why, when I see our current flag, I associate it with Henry Sibley and his deeds. An incomprehensive account follows. 

After leading the design of the territorial seal in 1849, but before he led any military campaign, he acknowledged the federal government’s wrongdoing:

“The whole policy pursued by the government...has a tendency to destroy [Indians] speedily...By persisting in a course which they have repeatedly warned must end in the extinction of these tribes, they show how little real regard they have for their welfare.”

The word did not yet exist, but what Sibley described was genocide. Despite his clairvoyance, he created the conditions--through corrupt treaties that enriched himself--that led to the genocide he personally participated in.

After Minnesota became a state, he led the military in the U.S.-Dakota War. Sibley wrote that he would drive the Dakota “across the Missouri [River] or to the devil.”

He called Dakota people: “Devils in human shape! My heart is hardened against them beyond any touch of mercy.”

After the war officially ended, Sibley--who had no military nor legal experience--oversaw fraudulent trials. He ignored caution, barrelling forward, even when concerns were raised over his legal and ethical failures. Sibley believed by sentencing 303 Dakota people to death he would “satisfy the longings of the most bloodthirsty.”

Following the hangings of the Dakota 38+2, Sibley was one of the generals in charge of expeditions to further destroy the Dakota people. As General, he oversaw multiple massacres of innocent indigenous communities and expressed regret that he didn’t kill more.

In 1893, two years after his death, Sibley's seal design was used for Minnesota's first state flag. 

We cannot erase nor ignore this part of our history.

I believe the symbols chosen by Henry Sibley belong in a museum, where history is preserved, and not glorified atop a flagpole saluted by our servicemembers.