Six months after a commission was created to review the seal and motto of Massachusetts, the group is missing members and doesn’t expect to meet the Oct. 1 deadline to file its report.
“First and foremost, we need to make a recommendation at some point to change the deadline,” State Rep. Antonio Cabral, a New Bedford Democrat, said during Monday’s virtual meeting.
The current state seal features a hand gripping a sword over the head of a Native American, Latin motto “Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem” outlines the seal. The motto translates to, “by the sword we seek peace,” and the sword “symbolizes Myles Standish, an English militia leader in the 1600s who attacked Native American settlements.”
After decades of pressure from Native American activists and lawmakers, the Legislature passed S.2848, a bill that created a 19-member state seal and motto commission.
A proposal of an educational program on the history and meaning of the state seal and motto must also be submitted by the October deadline.
Cabral called the deadline “unrealistic,” stating that language changes and commission seats must be filled before they can proceed with any “official action.”
The incomplete commission includes Indigenous tribe representatives, Massachusetts senators, legislators, historians and archivists.
Many committee members expressed the necessity of meeting in person, Cabral said this will not be possible due to the State House being currently closed to the public.
“I don’t see an in-person meeting before September, even early October,” said Cabral.
The majority of the first meeting was spent on logistics, deciding whether or not they were a legislative commission or executive commission.
Once the conversation transitioned to the job at hand, commission members spoke about their expectations for the group.
“If we’re going to really tackle this, we got to be serious and it’s got to be quality work,” said John Peters executive director of Massachusetts Indian Affairs. “It’s gotta be recommendations that are sensitive to all Indigenous folk.”
State Archives Executive Director Michael Comeau stressed that the group educate themselves on the deep history of the state seal and motto, “it’s really important for all of us to understand, there’s a lot of educating for us to do a. It goes back to the settlement of the colony, the native peoples here, that initial interaction, how we sort of got to this point, there are many elements within the seal in the model that we have to consider in some detail.”
Peters, of native descent, stated the current symbol to be realistic to “what happened to us native people in the commonwealth.” He hopes the commission can change the symbol to something that isn’t so “egregious to Native Americans,” something that can represent Massachusetts’ diverse cultures.
Brittney Walley, Nipmuc Tribal Anti-Mascot representative, acknowledged the symbol’s history and how that must be taken into consideration during the redesign. She also declared the importance of moving forward, hoping the new symbol could be seen as “Aspirational.”
The commission will reconvene in the near future.
"seal" - Google News
July 20, 2021 at 05:52AM
https://ift.tt/2UkmlPd
Massachusetts commission meets to discuss redesign of official seal and motto of the Commonwealth, October de - MassLive.com
"seal" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3c1qdrW
https://ift.tt/2SzWv5y
No comments:
Post a Comment