Keller at Large
Growing up around here, you’d hear a phrase commonly used to describe someone daft: “lighter than ashes.”
That’s a good description of the debate over whether or not we should scrap the outdated state seal that memorializes violence against Native Americans in favor of something less offensive. (Maybe an old coot sitting next to a cracker barrel?)
Critics of the seal note its disembodied hand menacing a Native American is holding a sword modeled after one wielded by Myles Standish, the 17th century Plymouth Colony militia commander notorious for his Hamas-style brutality toward the natives. Perhaps, suggests Stefanie Salguero of Billerica, a descendant of the Lakota Sioux, we’d do better to “honor what Massachusetts now stands for, not so much the historical context of genocide.”…