Amanda Dover is an alum of the CHRM program, having received her master's degree in 2024. Her thesis is titled California Mission Bell Markers: A Study of Heritage and Culture. Dover focused on the contested status of the 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. Her thesis provides a robust historic context for the bell markers, particularly their installation along the El Camino Real Highway (today’s 101 Freeway) beginning in 1906 by the Native Daughters of the Golden West, historically a nativist organization that sought to promote tourism at the missions, and helped to build the benevolent mission myth. Built on research undertaken by Santa Cruz Mission State Park, where she interned during the summer of 2023, Amanda used surveys of state park visitors and data collected from individual and organizational stakeholders. Her analysis yielded a productive contrast in attitudes between Native American tribes and Californio descendants claiming heritage of the early Spanish colonists.
Following below is an archived profile.
Hello, I’m Amanda and I live in Santa Cruz, California. I graduated from UC Santa Cruz in June of 2022. I am an anthropology major and focused my education on historic archaeology. I completed a field school in summer of 2022 through my community college, Cabrillo College, which was CRM focused. During my time at UC Santa Cruz I worked under a PhD student for a year. Together we worked on a project related to Japanese American internment, while focusing on Japanese American farming and community in the Pajaro Valley pre and post internment. I also did an internship through UC Santa Cruz at the Monterey Bay Archaeological Archives. I took inventory of items and field reports stored at the archives. At the archives we worked in connection with the Native American Heritage Commission, and worked towards repatriating stored items back to local Indigenous communities. I am interested in lab analysis, archival work, collections management, and teaching at a community college. Growing up in California, I went through the 4th grade California Mission curriculum, where I learned a false and romanticized history of Indigenous people and the missions. I am interested in bringing more awareness to the myth of the mission and the decolonizing of colonial spaces and landscapes in California. I like to connect social justice issues to my work.
