Meet Peggy Flanagan, who could become the first Native American governor

This is true. Historically, for many tribal nations and for literally thousands of years, women chose the chief and sat on various councils. This upset early European male settlers, who were not accustomed to having a woman sitting across from them, much less talking about politics and making decisions on behalf of the tribe.

In the car, Flanagan was happy to be out of the sun and drinking some ice water. I mentioned the reality that we are the smallest racial minority on our ancestral land and rarely included in national conversations, especially political discourse, and then asked, “How would you describe Indigenous peoples to those who are not familiar or familiar with Native people today?”

It was, she told me, a weighty question. “We are beautiful. We are survivors. We are guardians of our communities. We are teachers and scientists, and we have always been here,” she said. “We are contemporary people, and of course we are not a monolith.”

There are currently 574 federally recognized tribes, and each tribe and nation is unique in language, politics, customs, cuisine, and spirituality. Not all tribes lived in tepees, and not all nations wore eagle feather headdresses.

Flanagan lamented, however, that there is still a need to state the obvious and teach such things, like an “Indigenous 101” every year. She recalled a time when a colleague approached her in amazement, having just learned that she was, in fact, Native.

“I thought you were all dead!” his colleague, an elected official in the Minnesota State House of Representatives, said at the time.

Not sure how to respond, Flanagan shouted, “Surprise!” He sees the exchange, while frightening, as “a really important moment” to remind non-Natives that we’re still here. “It illustrated the need for people to connect with us,” he said.

When news broke Tuesday morning that Kamala Harris had chosen Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Native Americans across the country were buzzing—and not because Harris had chosen Walz, but because, in accordance with the Minnesota Constitution, if Harris and Walz beat Trump and Vance, Flanagan would assume the governor’s office and instantly make history.

Celebrity chef Sean Sherman, an Oglala Lakota who owns and operates Owamni, a Minneapolis restaurant that boasts “decolonized cuisine” (berries, bison, wild rice and other indigenous foods from this continent), was thrilled to have a Native woman represent his state.

Sherman praised Flanagan for ensuring that Indigenous peoples are not ignored, that they are seen and heard in the Legislature. She has worked diligently to ensure economic opportunity for the state’s First Peoples. Sherman said her work “in trying to normalize Indigenous foods and create access and education, reconnecting us to our ancestral foods and medicines would be much more difficult” without people like Flanagan, Interior Secretary Debra Haaland, who is Laguna Pueblo, and Representative Sharice Davids of Kansas, who is Ho-Chunk Nation.

Now, a half-decade after the protest where Flanagan and I met, the country and the electorate are quickly learning who Flanagan is: the mom, the lieutenant governor, the former Minneapolis school board member, and, quite possibly, the next governor of Minnesota. She told me she didn’t think she’d see a black woman, let alone a Native American, in that role in her lifetime.

If this happens, Aborigines will rejoice all over the United States.

“When I’m with other Native people, and especially young Native girls, I tell them to take up as much space as possible,” she said. “Physically take up the space, because you absolutely have a right to be there.”

After all, this is the land of the natives.