By David Detmold
The flag and seal of Massachusetts show a settler’s hand holding a Colonial broadsword over the head of an Indigenous man, with a Latin motto beneath, commonly translated: “She seeks a quiet peace with liberty under the sword.”
A recent special commission established by the state legislature concluded in November of 2023, that the image on our state flag and seal is easily interpreted as “a celebration of the history of settler violence perpetuated against Indigenous people.”
No one wants to have a sword hanging over their head.
In 1985, former state representative Byron Rushing, a Boston civil rights leader, worked with the director of the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs, the late Mashpee Wampanoag medicine man John ‘Slow Turtle’ Peters, to introduce state legislation to change the white supremacist symbol of the Commonwealth.
That legislation was continuously stalled by the state legislature for over 30 years, until four small towns in rural Franklin County began a movement in 2018, voting favorably on annual town meeting resolutions that called for a new state flag and seal.
In the years since then, 78 more cities and towns have followed their lead and adopted similar resolutions, pushing the state legislature to finally make this long awaited change.
In doing so, they have followed the call of Indigenous leaders from all the state and federally recognized tribal nations of our region.
Grassroots Central Massachusetts has played a key role in this statewide effort. In 2022 and 2023, we organized successful town meeting votes to change the flag and seal in Sturbridge, Brookfield and W. Brookfield. We brought this issue forward to the city council of Southbridge, resulting in a tie vote in 2023, while town meeting votes in Monson, North Brookfield and Oakham fell short of passing.
But even in towns where the vote failed by close margins, extensive door to door canvassing, informational meetings and media outreach allowed for important gains by educating the public about the need to uphold Indigenous rights and banish a state symbol that glorifies past violence and genocide.
In July of 2024, Governor Maura Healey signed an amendment to the state budget to set up a 10-person advisory commission, with at least two Indigenous members, to solicit design ideas from the general public, hold public hearings, and create a new flag and seal for Massachusetts by the summer of 2025.
Grassroots Central Massachusetts will work to ensure that this process stays on track, and looks forward to the public education campaign which the governor also authorized “to help residents understand the local Indigenous history and the historical underpinnings of the previous and new seals, mottos and flags from an Indigenous perspective.”
Healing the harm of colonial violence – the wars of conquest, the massacres of Native villages, the bounties offered by Massachusetts governors for the scalps of Native men, women and children, the theft of Native land, the enslavement and sale of Indigenous people from Boston to the Caribbean, the removal of Native children from their homes to distant boarding schools, and the legacy of racism and ongoing oppression – this is not the work of a single generation, not something we can heal simply by changing our state flag.
But we are taking a small step, in recognition of the important work before us.
For that, we thank all the people who worked so hard to bring this issue forward at town meetings in our region, with the organizational support of Grassroots Central Massachusetts.
