Special 25-minute podcast episode on El Camino Real bell removal from Challenging Colonialism podcasts
Bell removal in the news
- SF Gate 2/2/22: Bay Area city feuds over the installation of a ‘symbol of white supremacy’ downtown
- NPR 2/2/22: Many Indigenous people see California mission bells as a reminder of painful history
- KPIX 5 / CBS San Francisco 2/1/2022: Native Americans Accuse Gilroy City Leaders Of Ignoring Objections To ‘Mission Bell’ (video)
- Mercury News 1/28/22: Despite protest, Gilroy erects California ‘mission bell’
- NBC Bay Area 1/28/21: Controversial Mission Bell Installed in Downtown Gilroy
- Mercury News 1/27/21: ‘Mission bells’ have become California’s version of Confederate statues. This Bay Area city is poised to install one
- ABC 7 1/17/22: Bay Area Native Americans oppose replica mission bell installation, say it represents dark history
- KION 1/12/21: Native Americans express disappointment after City of Gilroy ignores calls to ditch mission bell
- Gilroy Dispatch 1/12/21: Amah Mutsun Tribal Band urges Gilroy to rethink bell
- 90.3 KAZU 12/21/21: Why a local Indigenous leader wants to remove California’s highway bells
- Lookout Santa Cruz 9/2/21: Where Santa Cruz’s final mission bell now tolls not the question — just its tragic history, what it stood for
- Santa Cruz Good Times 8/31/21: Bell Symbolizing Past Atrocities Stolen Prior to Santa Cruz’s Planned Removal: Santa Cruz is the first California city to remove all bells from public property
- Santa Cruz Sentinel 8/29/21: Indigenous communities call for reckoning with racist history of California’s missions at bell removal ceremony
- Benitolink 8/31/21: Santa Cruz takes down its last El Camino Real bell
- Santa Cruz Sentinel 8/25/21: Third and final mission bell to be removed within city of Santa Cruz
- Los Angeles Times 8/11/19: Mission bell tells tale of two pasts
- Santa Cruz Sentinel 6/21/19: Call for historic mission bell removal begins at UC Santa Cruz
- KPIX CBS 6/21/19: UC Santa Cruz Removes Controversial Replica Mission Bell (video segment)
- Los Angeles Times 6/21/19: Essential California: For whom the mission bell tolls
- SF Chronicle 7/3/19: As tensions flare over monuments, universities target California’s mission past
- UK Daily Mail 6/22/19: University of California, Santa Cruz removes El Camino Real bell that marks Catholic missions in order to be more ‘inclusive’ after Native Americans said it glorifies racism
- Fox News (national) 6/22/19: Historic Catholic marker deemed ‘racist symbol’ removed by University of California Santa Cruz
Editorials and letters to the editor
- Los Angeles Times 3/21/22: Op-Ed: Why the California ‘mission bell’ road markers must come down by Valentin Lopez
- Santa Cruz Sentinel 1/31/22: Editorial | For whom the California mission bells still toll
- Gilroy Life 1/28/22: Guest column by Valentin Lopez: Mission bells are a symbol of the enslavement of California’s native peoples
- Gilroy Dispatch 1/20/22: Letter: Council needs to revisit bell installation by Jan Guffey
- Gilroy Dispatch 12/30/21: Guest View: These bells don’t jingle by Naka Elelleh
- City on a Hill Press 2018: Take Down the Mission Bell at UCSC
Articles and press releases
- Full video: 8/28/21 Santa Cruz El Camino Real Bell Removal Ceremony: Speakers at Mission Plaza
- Healing and Decolonization: Contesting Mission Bells, El Camino Real, and California Governor Newsom— Journal article by Renya K. Ramirez and Valentin Lopez in Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture (PDF)
- Voices of Monterey Bay: For whom the bells toll: Native tribe seeks to remove mission markers in Santa Cruz (Andrea Patton, 2019)
- KZSC Radio 8/25/21: Remove the California Mission Bells: An Interview with Valentin Lopez, Chair of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band
- 2019 UC Santa Cruz Bell Removal Amah Mutsun Press Release (PDF)
- Santa Cruz Left 6/6/2021: Colonialism: The True Cancel Culture by Martin Rizzo-Martinez
- KCET: How El Camino Real, California’s ‘Royal Road,’ Was Invented (2013)
Telling the truth about California missions
- California’s First Mass Incarceration System: Franciscan Missions, California Indians, and Penal Servitude, 1769–1836. Benjamin Madley, 2019. (34 page article, free)
- Beyond Philology (2016): California mission bells: Listening against the "fantasy heritage" by Grzegorz Welizarowicz
- When the Mission Bells Rang – a new children’s book written by Judith Scott and illustrated by Lydia Gibson, in consultation with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. Available now in print and PDF versions!
- Franciscans, Russians, and Indians on the International Borders of Alta California (PDF, 14 pages) 2018 article by Kent G. Lightfoot and Ann E. Danis
- The New California Mission System: Museums, Gift Shops and Historical Archaeologists (PDF, 12 pages) Mark Pedelty, 1992.
- KQED: ‘How Do We Heal?’ Toppling the Myth of Junípero Serra (article)
- 2020 Toppling Monuments and Mythologies Conference (YouTube Playlist)
- Critical Mission Studies
- Book: California Vieja: Culture and Memory in a Modern American Place. Phoebe S. Kropp, 2008. Publisher page | Amazon link
- Book: A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions. Elias Castillo, 2017. Amazon link
- Book: Resurrecting the Past: The California Mission Myth. Michelle M. Lorimer, 2006. Amazon link
- Book: Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir—by Deborah A. Miranda. Heyday Books, 2013. Bad Indians website | Publisher page | Amazon link
- Book: We Are Not Animals: Indigenous Politics of Survival, Rebellion, and Reconstitution in Nineteenth-Century California, Martin Rizzo-Martinez, 2022 (Available for pre-order only). Publisher page | Amazon link
- Standing Up to Sugar Cubes: The Contest over Ethnic Identity in California’s Fourth-Grade Mission Curriculum (PDF article) by Zevi Gutfreund
- Lying to Children About the California Missions and the Indians (article) by Debroah Miranda
- See the resource list at the Walk for the Ancestors website