Flanagan win brings Native women's legacy to the Senate

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More than two decades ago, at an education event at the Minneapolis American Indian Center, Peggy Flanagan took the microphone and offered to help anyone who wanted to run for the Minneapolis school board. Franny Fairbanks, the center’s longtime director, had a question for her.

“My girl, why don’t you do it?” Flanagan remembered during a recent interview with MPR News.

On Tuesday, Flanagan won Minnesota’s open U.S. Senate seat, defeating Republican Michele Tafoya. The seat opened when Sen. Tina Smith decided not to seek reelection.

She will be one of the first Native American women to serve in the U.S. Senate. It is the same chamber that ratified treaties between the United States and the Ojibwe and Dakota nations of Minnesota, and that voted in 1863 to cancel the Dakota treaties after the U.S.-Dakota War. Native Americans were not recognized as U.S. citizens until 1924.

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