Page 38 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide 2017 - Alaska

36  INTRODUCING ALASK A

Russian Culture in Alaska

While modern Alaska is tied ideologically to mainstream
USA and traditionally to its own Native cultures, there
are also remnants of 18th- and 19th-century Russian
colonization. The distinctive crosses and onion-domed
spires of Orthodox churches across Alaska attest to
the fact that the colonizers were not just concerned
with trade, but also brought with them their religious
convictions, con verting many Native Alaskans to their Russian Big Diomede (right) and
faith. Today, most Southwest Alaska villages still have the US island of Little Diomede (left)
a Russian Orthodox majority population. lie in the Bering Strait.
Icons include All Saints of Alaska: Innocent,
Herman, Jakov, Juvenali, and Peter the Aleut.

A Russian priest and settlers gather
with Native Tlingit people in tradi­ Deacon doors in this
tional dress in this photograph chapel have icons of
taken in Sitka circa 1900. St. Stephen (left) and
St. Lawrence (right).

Alexander Baranov (1747–
1819) is honored with this
statue in Sitka, where
he once lived. Attracted to
Alaska by the fur trade,
he became the manager of
the Russian­American
Company in 1790 and the
first Colonial Governor of
Russian America in 1799.
Old Believers The analogian displays icons for worshipers,
who may not approach the iconostasis.
In 1652, Patriarch Nikon of Moscow ordered reforms to
traditional Orthodoxy and excommunicated any dissidents.
Many of the dispossessed, calling them selves Old Believers,
fled to Siberia to escape perse cution. In 1945, to escape the
Soviet system, many migrated to Brazil and eventually to the
USA. In the late 1960s, one group established several villages
around Nikolaevsk, which are modern Alaska’s only Russian
settlements. Currently, about 2,000 Old Believers, who still
speak Old Russian, live largely by fishing and farming.

The New Archangel Dancers of
Sitka perform Russian folk songs
Old Believer women working in the fields near Nikolaevsk and dances to pro mote Alaska’s
Russian heritage.

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