Sudbury Backs Changing Massachusetts Seal, Flag

SUDBURY, MA — Sudbury Town Meeting has thrown its weight behind an ongoing state effort to update the Massachusetts flag and seal.

Town Meeting on Monday voted 139-13 to approve an article backing the work of a special commission charged with redesigning the state's main emblems. Sudbury is the 78th community in the state to back the effort.

Resident and signature gatherer Katina Fontes said the Town Meeting vote is a “statement we are making as a community that we reject racist imagery that basically supports white supremacy. The Indigenous community has been lobbying to change this symbol for a long, long time.”

In May 2022, a 19-member state seal and motto commission made up of Massachusetts senators, historians, indigenous tribe representatives, and legislators unanimously voted to recommend the change of the seal originally designed in 1898.

The Massachusetts state flag depicts a Native American holding a bow and arrow beneath an arm holding a sword — supposedly the hand of English militia leader Myles Standish — poised to strike the indigenous person beneath him. Standish brutalized Native Americans after arriving here on the Mayflower in the early 1620s.

Sudbury's resolution supporting changes has been handed to state Sen. Jamie Eldridge and state Rep. Carmine Gentile to use in the Legislature to pursue new designs.