California Mission Bell Markers: A Study of Heritage and Culture

Join SCAS for a presentation by Amanda Dover on: “California Mission Bell Markers: A Study of Heritage and Culture.”

DATE: Thursday, May 8, 2025
TIME: 7:30 – 8:30 PM (Pacific)

This is a hybrid event! We invite you to join us in-person at the Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, or via Zoom (see below for Zoom registration form)!

ZOOM REGISTRATION FORM: Meeting Registration –
http://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/ZSFQaIyMRsi3T86k9zVeCQ#/registration

***RSVP for Zoom by 6:30 PM on Thursday, May 8, 2025***

This discussion focuses on the contested status of the California mission bells as public heritage, with recent campaigns to contextualize and remove celebratory displays of the bells in consideration of the consequences of missionization for California Indian tribes. Dover will provide a robust historic context for the bell markers, particularly their installation along the El Camino Real Highway, roughly the route of today’s 101 Freeway. Beginning in 1906, the bells were erected by the Native Daughters of the Golden West, a historically nativist organization that sought to promote tourism at the missions, and helped to build the benevolent mission myth. Dover used surveys of state park visitors taken at the Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park, where she interned during the summer of 2023, and data collected from individual and organizational stakeholders, to drive her research. The analysis yielded a productive contrast in attitudes between Native American tribes and Californio descendants claiming heritage of the early Spanish colonists.

Amanda received her AA in Anthropology from Cabrillo College in June of 2020, and in 2022 she completed her BA in Anthropology at UC Santa Cruz. During the summer of 2022, Dover attended and completed the Cabrillo College archaeological field school. She then transferred to the University of Maryland, College Park, where she received her Master’s in Cultural and Heritage Resource Management in spring of 2024. Amanda currently works as an English, Anthropology, and Archaeology tutor in the tutoring center at Cabrillo College. She is also a part-time technical report writer and an on-call field technician for two local Santa Cruz Cultural Resources Management companies. Amanda’s thesis work was inspired by her 4th grade trip to the San Juan Bautista mission, where she learned a false and romanticized history of California Indians and the California missions. She is passionate about and is continuously working towards bringing more awareness to the myth of the missions, to revise the California 4th grade mission curriculum, and the decolonization of colonial spaces and landscapes in California. Amanda enjoys connecting social justice issues to her work.