Sheffield — Residents will vote on a resolution to support the change of the Commonwealth’s state flag and seal of at the town’s Annual Town Meeting this year. Though the resolution has only now reached Sheffield, indigenous leaders and activists throughout the Commonwealth have been working for over 50 years to make this change happen.
Adopted in 1898, the seal and flag of Massachusetts depict a Native man holding a bow and arrow, the arrow pointed down. Above his head is an isolated arm wielding a colonial broadsword—modeled after Myles Standish’s broadsword kept in Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth. The motto, written in Latin, reads: “By the sword we seek peace.” The depiction of the Native man is a composite of a Native skeleton dug up in Winthrop and the face of Ojibwe Chief Thomas Little Shell. The Ojibwe’s homelands are in the Great Lakes Region of the U.S. and Canada. This imagery and the accompanying motto, which was designed without the input of Indigenous residents, was deemed to include features that are harmful and misunderstood by citizens of Massachusetts.
The Berkshire Edge spoke with David Detmold, who runs the website Change the Mass Flag. Detmold has been coordinating a grassroots effort to bring a resolution of support for changing the flag and seal of Massachusetts to annual town and city council meetings for the past eight years…