Resolution to change seal Petition 
The Massachusetts state seal is a visual reminder of racism and genocide against Native Americans and should be updated, say supporters of a Town Meeting resolution asking for a state commission to study the seal’s design.
As a result of a citizens’ petition submitted by Christine Damon, residents will be asked at Lincoln’s Annual Town Meeting on March 23 to support creation of the commission. Two identical measures before the state legislature (HD.2968 and SD.1495) call for creating the commission. Lincoln’s legislators, Sen. Michael Barrett and Rep. Thomas Stanley, are co-sponsors.
Four other Massachusetts towns (Gill, Orange, Wendell and New Salem) considered similar measures in 2018, though the results could not be confirmed.
Critics of the state seal take issue with the depiction of a European arm brandishing a broadsword above the head of a Native American, who is holding a bow and arrow pointed down in a gesture of peace.
The seal’s Latin motto, which is usually translated as “By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty,” is also ambiguous and could be taken to mean that Native Americans were a threat to peace. The motto “is most out of place when one knows the later fate reserved for the Algonquins who greeted the Pilgrims,” commented one of the respondents to a 2015 survey by a flag expert. Other respondents disagreed, saying the sword is not being used against the Indian but refers to the leading role that Massachusetts played in the American Revolution.
The survey found that comments on the state seal from all Indians polled as well as non-Indians outside Massachusetts were overwhelmingly negative, though 88 percent of comments from non-Indian Massachusetts residents were favorable.
“It is hard to read it all together as anything but a flag designed by and for the colonial conquerors who made the Bay State, the ones who won the land — with a short timeout for Thanksgiving dinner — by all but eradicating the people who got here first,” Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham wrote in 2015.
An earlier version of the seal used by the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1629–1692 was more peaceful but also more condescending, depicting a Native American speaking the words “Come over and help us.”
The issue “reiterates why symbols are important in terms of making people feel represented or the opposite,” Damon said. “It seems like a no-brainer that the state of Massachusetts shouldn’t be upholding symbolism like this.”
The move to reexamine the state seal comes in a time of movements to remove the Confederate battle flag from state flags in the South, as well as monuments celebrating Confederate generals. Next year is also the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival at Plymouth Rock, an event “which gave rise to the long chain of genocidal wars and deliberate policies of cultural destruction against Native Nations of this continent,” the warrant resolution says.
If approved by the legislature, the state commission would investigate features of the seal and motto “which potentially have been unwittingly harmful to or misunderstood by the citizens of the Commonwealth” and “to ensure that they faithfully reflect and embody the historic and contemporary commitments of the Commonwealth to peace, justice, liberty and equality and to spreading the opportunities and advantages of education.”
