SWAMPSCOTT — Martha Curry has submitted a citizens petition for a Town Meeting warrant article. The petition is calling for Town Meeting members to vote in favor of supporting a change of the Massachusetts motto, flag, and seal.
David Detmold of Montague, the coordinator of changethemassflag.com, has been leading the effort since 2017 to get towns and cities across Massachusetts to do the same.
“Our official state symbol shows a white hand holding a sword over the head of an Indigenous person and a Latin motto that roughly translates as ‘She seeks a quiet peace under the sword, but peace with liberty,’” he said.
Detmold said that Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs Executive Director John Peters described the symbol as accurately representing the state’s history of violence and genocide against Native people.
Detmold reached out to Curry, who has been a Town Meeting member in the past, for her to do the citizens’ petition for Swampscott.
“I looked at some of the material and it made sense to me,” Curry said. “And in some of the other work I’ve done, if the people who are closer to the pain or oppressed or whatever asked for help, I’m going to do what I can.”
The town requires ten signatures and she got 17.
Currently, 56 cities and towns have voted in support of the flag, seal, and motto change. Only two towns have voted against it.
“We’re very hopeful Swampscott will be among those towns,” Detmold said.
Potential changes to the flag have been in discussion for a long time.
“I’d say for 50 years now or more, Indigenous leaders of the area we now call the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have been protesting and seeking a change to the official seal, motto, and flag of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Detmold said. “For the past 40 years, this issue has been before the legislature.”
In 1985, Massachusetts Representative Byron Rushing (D-Suffolk) worked with the Commission on Indian Affairs on a bill that would “establish a special commission to recommend changes to the flag and seal of Massachusetts,” Detmold said.
“That bill languished and was sidelined in the legislature for 34 years in a row,” Detmold said. “Then, finally, it was reintroduced after Byron Rushing was no longer in office in the year 2019 and, by that time, cities and towns had begun to weigh in on this issue.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, the State Senate voted unanimously for a commission to recommend the changes to be created.
That commission was supposed to complete the work by October 2021, but former Governor Charlie Baker had not finished appointing all 19 commission members until November 2021.
“So they were unable to meet that original deadline, but finally the 19 members were impaneled, and they included six Indigenous leaders from the Commonwealth,” Detmold said.
Those six are Elizabeth Solomon of The Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag, Melissa Ferretti of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe, Cheryl Andrews-Maltais of the Wampanoag Tribe at Gay Head Aquinnah, Brian Weeden of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, Brittney Walley of the Nipmuc Tribe, and Peters of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.
“Those Indigenous leaders for the first time were consulted as to their recommendations on the Commonwealth symbol, and unanimously they pushed for the rest of the commission to join them in saying that this is … a harmful symbol, and then it needs to be totally revised,” Detmold said.
In December 2022, the commission turned in their recommendations to the legislature, calling for “a total revision of the flag and seal.”
“So that is sort of where we are at today,” Detmold said.
For Swampscott, Curry is in the process of deciding whether she or someone else will present the article at Town Meeting.
“I’m going to figure out how to reach out to all the Town Meeting members and share this information, because it’s a good thing,” Curry said.
