Who Was St Innocent of Alaska? Missionary, Linguist and Metropolitan of Moscow

In the summer of 1824 a young married priest from Irkutsk stepped ashore on Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands with his mother, his wife, an infant son and his brother. Father Ioann Veniaminov would spend the next decade among the Unangan (Aleut) people, give their language an alphabet, and write in it the first Christian books Alaska's Native peoples could read in their own tongue. He ended his life as Metropolitan of Moscow, one of the senior sees of the Russian Church. The Orthodox Church remembers him as St Innocent, Enlightener of the Aleuts and Apostle to America.

His story is unusually well documented, since many of his letters, reports and books survive. It also sits inside a colonial history: the mission he served was funded by a fur company whose arrival had devastated the people he came to serve. This article tells the life as the Church remembers it and then asks which parts can be verified.

In brief

Ioann (John) Popov-Veniaminov was born in 1797 near Irkutsk, served as a parish priest on Unalaska (1824-1834) and in Sitka (1834-1838), devised with the Unangan chief Ivan Pan'kov a Cyrillic alphabet for the Fox Island dialect of Aleut, and translated the catechism and the Gospel of Matthew into it. He also wrote an Aleut devotional book and a detailed ethnography of the Aleutians. Widowed, he became a monk and, in 1840, bishop of a new diocese with its see at Sitka; as bishop and archbishop he founded a seminary there and extended missions across Siberia. As Metropolitan of Moscow from 1868 he led the founding of the Orthodox Missionary Society. He died on Holy Saturday, 31 March 1879, and was glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church at the request of the Orthodox Church in America in 1977. His writings forbid coercion and bribery in mission; they also show the paternalism of his age.

Thesis: St Innocent brought the good news of Christ to the peoples of Alaska and Siberia in their own languages, and the documents confirm the Church's memory of a missionary of rare gifts whose respect for Native tongues left a lasting Christian literacy in Alaska. The colonial enterprise around his mission had real costs that Native Alaskans bore, and some of his own language reflects that setting; neither fact makes the Gospel he preached one culture's imposition.

The life as the Church tells it

The Russian Church's official account says he was born on 26 August 1797 in Anginskoye, in the Irkutsk province, into the family of a church server.¹ At the Irkutsk seminary he was given the surname Veniaminov, after the late Bishop Benjamin of Irkutsk.² He married Catherine, a priest's daughter, was ordained deacon in 1817 and priest in 1821, and served the Church of the Annunciation in Irkutsk.³

In 1823 the Holy Synod asked Irkutsk for a priest for Unalaska, and no one volunteered. Veniaminov later recalled that he too had refused, until a traveler described the Aleuts' eagerness to hear the word of God. Then, as he put it, "Blessed be the name of the Lord!" he was suddenly on fire to go to such people.⁴ He arrived on Unalaska on 29 July 1824, in the Church's account.⁵

On Unalaska he trained local men as carpenters, smiths and masons and built with them the Church of the Ascension, consecrated in 1826. He made the altar table and the iconostasis himself.⁶ He traveled his island parish by kayak. In a letter from the island of Unga in 1828 he wrote, "Words cannot describe the zeal with which the Aleuts received my teaching."⁷

In 1834 he was moved to Sitka (Novoarkhangelsk), the colonial capital, to work among the Tlingit, who regarded the Russians with deep suspicion. In 1838 he sailed for St Petersburg to ask the Synod for more clergy and for permission to print his translations. While he was away, his wife Catherine died. Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, who said of him, "There is something apostolic about that man," urged him to become a monk.⁸ He was tonsured with the name Innocent on 29 November 1840 and consecrated on 15 December as Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands, with his see at Sitka.⁹

As bishop he traveled by ship, dogsled and reindeer from Alaska to Okhotsk. Raised to archbishop in 1850, he moved to Yakutsk in 1853 and oversaw translation of the services into Yakut, first served in 1859.¹⁰ In January 1868 he was named Metropolitan of Moscow, succeeding Philaret. Arriving in May, he told his new flock that he was only "a teacher of infants and those in the infancy of faith."¹¹ Nearly blind, he pressed for the Orthodox Missionary Society, which opened in Moscow in January 1870 and raised money for missions across the empire.¹² He died at 2:45 in the morning on Holy Saturday, 31 March 1879, and was buried at the Trinity-St Sergius Lavra.¹³

The colony he served

None of this happened on empty ground. Russian fur hunters reached the Aleutians around 1750. The Unangan community development association APICDA writes that "By 1800, little more than 50 years after first Russian contact, the Unangax population had been reduced by some 80 percent."¹⁴ The City of Unalaska's own history says the decline came "from out-and-out genocide to contact diseases brought by the newcomers," and that the Unangan were consolidated into fewer villages to exploit their hunting skills.¹⁵

From 1799 the Russian-American Company held a monopoly over trade and government in the colony. The Library of Congress exhibit on the church archives notes that the Company financed the Church's missionary and educational work, "thus inextricably entwining the Company and the Church," while the clergy often acted as the colony's conscience "in opposition to Company practices."¹⁶ The Orthodox priest and scholar Michael Oleksa puts it more sharply: there "the secular business interests of the Russian American Company clashed directly with the evangelistic spiritual goals of the Russian Orthodox Church."¹⁷ Veniaminov's mission depended on that company, and an honest account has to hold both facts together.

Most Unangan had also been baptized before he came. APICDA notes that "even before the first Russian Orthodox priests had arrived from Russia, Unangax were being baptized into the church by Russian laymen."¹⁸ His work on Unalaska was mostly teaching people already baptized into the Church.

The primary historical evidence

• His published works. The Synod gave permission on 12 February 1840 to print his Aleut catechism, his translation of Matthew and the Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven.¹⁹ The Library of Congress holds these books, his Aleut primer and his studies of the Aleut, Tlingit and Kodiak languages (1846).²⁰ His Notes on the Islands of the Unalaska District (1840) was translated into English by Lydia Black and R. H. Geoghegan in 1984.²¹
• Letters and reports. His handwritten letters survive in the Alaskan Russian Church Archives at the Library of Congress.²² His biographer Ivan Barsukov gathered nearly three thousand pages of his letters and writings and published a Life in 1883, four years after his death.²³
• Instructions to missionaries. His instruction to Hieromonk Theophan, missionary at Nushagak, written while he was archbishop, was printed in English in the Russian Orthodox American Messenger in 1899.²⁴
• The 1977 Act of glorification. The Russian Church's summary of his life, translated in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1978 and reproduced by the OCA.²⁵

Dates sometimes differ (the City of Unalaska gives his arrival as 24 July 1824; the Library of Congress dates his Aleut catechism to 1834, though the printed copies are of 1840), without changing the outline of his life.²⁶

What can we actually verify?

(a) Contemporary or near-contemporary documentary evidence

{{very-strong: Veniaminov, working with the Unangan chief Ivan Pan'kov, created a Cyrillic alphabet for the Fox Island dialect of Aleut and translated the catechism and the Gospel of Matthew, which were printed in 1840.}}²⁷ The Library of Congress calls his Aleut catechism "the first book published in an Alaskan Native language."²⁸ A National Park Service history of the eastern Aleutians quotes a visitor in 1860 who wrote, "Every Aleut on the island of Unalaska is literate," and shows how the generation taught in his school went on to build village chapels and serve as readers.²⁹

The Library of Congress calls him "Undoubtedly the greatest educator in Russian America," who "insisted that priests learn Native languages and customs" and opened a seminary at Sitka in 1841.³⁰ The Act also preserves his letter of April 1842, reporting that the Sitka school had opened the previous December with 23 Creole and Native students.³¹

His principles of mission are in his own words. {{strong: His instruction to the Nushagak missionary forbids baptizing anyone without full instruction and free consent, and forbids winning converts by "compulsion, threats, bribes or promises (of exemption from taxes and the like)."}} It tells the missionary never to say "that thou art sent by any government," never to show "open contempt for their manner of living, customs, etc.," to pay Native guides, and to learn the language. It allows that "Ancient customs, so long as they are not contrary to Christianity, need not be too abruptly broken up," and adapts the fasts to Arctic diets, since converts "should not be compelled to observe the fasts by change of diet."³² The Indication of the Way carries the same note into theology: Christ "does not compel or force anyone to follow Him."³³

His episcopal career is public record. His letter of 5 December 1867 to the Synod's Ober-Procurator, written after the sale of Alaska, survives in Paul Garrett's translation. In it he saw the sale as "one of the ways of Providence whereby Orthodoxy will penetrate the United States," and asked that the American bishop and clergy be allowed to serve "the Liturgy and other services in English."³⁴ The see did move to San Francisco in 1872; regular English worship did not follow for many decades.³⁵

(b) Later hagiographical tradition

The later Lives draw heavily on his letters but still shape the story. The Synod's Act says that his translations "soon displaced the shamanic chants" and that he "waged a vigorous campaign against the vicious practices of the natives." The turn from shamanism to Christ is rightly counted a gain, but the Act's sweeping talk of "the natives" speaks from the mission's side and does not record how the Unangan themselves saw the change.³⁶ The Russian Life describes the Aleuts as "unattractive, clumsy, but kind" and the Tlingit as proud and vengeful (translated here), stereotypes typical of nineteenth-century Russian writing.³⁷ Claims such as the round figure that he baptized ten thousand people should be read as the Church's summary, not as an audited count.³⁸

The same Russian Life is candid at points that later retellings soften. It says the Yakuts had been receiving baptism "mainly because of gifts and certain privileges" and remained largely ignorant of Christianity, which helps explain why his instruction bans gifts at baptism. It also records that he wrote a memorandum, "Something about the Amur," arguing that the Amur could be navigated and settled, and that his help toward Russia's acquisition of the Amur region was highly valued (translated here).³⁹ He was a churchman who served the empire as well as the Gospel.

(c) Reported miracles

The best-known wonder in his life is not a miracle he worked but one he reported. In April 1828, on the island of Akun, he met an elderly Unangan, Ivan Smirennikov, whom the villagers called a shaman. Smirennikov had foretold the priest's arrival and said that two white-robed spirits had taught him the faith for thirty years since his baptism. Veniaminov wrote to Archbishop Michael of Irkutsk in June 1828, with Ivan Pan'kov signing as witness to the translation, and asked for guidance. In his later report to the Synod he explained why he had declined to go and see the spirits himself: "Sinful that I am, I am unworthy of speaking to them, and it would be pride and presumption on my part if I dared to go to them." The letter ends, "If I erred, forgive me."⁴⁰

This signed, near-contemporary report is strong evidence of what Veniaminov was told and how he handled it, though it cannot by itself establish what Smirennikov saw. It shows Orthodox discernment at work: the priest neither dismissed the report nor made a spectacle of it, but humbled himself and laid it before his bishop. That God can send His angels to teach those who seek Him the Church has never doubted (compare Acts 10:3-6). The episode of the wind that changed at his prayer to St Herman in 1842 is told in our article on St Herman of Alaska. Miracles after his death play little part in the Act of glorification, which rests on his life and labors.⁴¹

Glorification and feast days

In 1974 the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in America asked the Moscow Patriarchate to study his canonization. {{very-strong: On 6 October 1977 (23 September on the Julian calendar) the Patriarch and Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, acting on the OCA's request, numbered him among the saints.}}⁴² His relics were found in 1994 during excavations near the Holy Spirit church at the Trinity-St Sergius Lavra.⁴³ The OCA commemorates him on 31 March (his repose), 6 October (his glorification) and 5 October with the Synaxis of the Moscow Hierarchs. Churches on the Julian calendar keep 31 March on the civil date of 13 April and 23 September on 6 October.⁴⁴ How a saint comes to be glorified is explained in How Does Someone Become a Saint in the Orthodox Church?

The Orthodox position

The Church honors Innocent as a hierarch and an apostle of the Americas and Siberia. Veneration of saints, including asking their prayers, rests on the communion of the Church across death, explained in Why Do Orthodox Christians Pray to Saints? The details of his life are historical questions; his holiness, which the Church has glorified, is not. The Act grounds it in his labors, his humility and his preaching rather than in wonders.

His theology of mission is a clear expression of Orthodox teaching on grace and freedom. The Indication of the Way tells the reader, "your salvation or perdition depends on your own will," while insisting that Christ "will even help you along the way."⁴⁵ Grace comes first and invites a free response, the synergy described in Grace and Free Will in Orthodox Christianity. Paul Garrett, his biographer, writes that he "insisted that the missionaries under his jurisdiction follow his own example of mastering the local dialects."⁴⁶ In Orthodox practice the Gospel is meant to be heard and prayed in the language of the people, as it was for the Slavs.

On the divided American pattern that grew up instead of his 1867 hopes, see Why Are There So Many Orthodox Jurisdictions?; other saints of Alaska, including St Olga of Alaska, are on our saints page.

The strongest objections

"He was an agent of Russian colonialism"

This objection has real force. The historian Ilya Vinkovetsky, as summarized by Stephen Haycox, places Russian America "fully within the history of colonialism" and argues that Veniaminov "contributed substantially to the Russification effort" by showing in his Notes that Native people were capable and adaptable, an asset to colonial aims.⁴⁷ His instruction forbids missionaries to "meddle with any temporal affairs" or openly discredit officials; if an official's treatment of Natives was "too cruel and unbearable," the missionary was to exhort him gently and then "report the matter confidentially."⁴⁸ That is protection within the system, not resistance to it.

Weighed fairly, the record also shows more. Within that system he defended Native freedom of conscience, banned bribery and coercion in mission, paid Native workers, refused to let clergy trade with converts, and gave Native languages a written form when later American policy, under Sheldon Jackson from 1885, would try to suppress them.⁴⁹ {{debated: How far the Orthodox mission softened Russian rule and how far it served it remains a live question among historians.}} The church he served outlived the empire: in the Aleutians, APICDA notes, Russian Orthodoxy "remains the majority religion today." Veneration does not require defending the fur trade. But the objection confuses the setting with the message. The Gospel belongs to no one culture: Christ sent His apostles to all nations (Matthew 28:19), and Innocent preached Him in the Unangan's own tongue so the faith would be theirs. The news of Christ's victory over death was the best thing the newcomers brought, and the Unangan kept it after the empire had gone.

"His paternalism undercuts the praise"

His instruction calls Native people "heathens and erring" in manners and ideas and children in "grade of culture," and uses the word "savages" freely.⁵⁰ The same text tells the missionary to listen "attentively, courteously, and patiently" when a Native person speaks, and treats every spiritual question from a Native hearer as "a matter of great importance."⁵¹ His practice was more respectful than his vocabulary: he studied Unangan customs and songs and wrote one of the first ethnographies of the region.

"The Tlingit mission failed"

At Sitka his success was limited. A National Library of Medicine timeline says he was "at first unpopular with the Tlingit" until he introduced smallpox vaccination during the 1836 epidemic, and the Russian Life admits that conversion there went slowly.⁵² The anthropologist Sergei Kan argues that Tlingit and Russians acted on "converged agendas," cooperating "for entirely different reasons," and that large-scale Tlingit interest in Orthodoxy came in the 1880s, partly as resistance to Americanization.⁵³ That corrects triumphal accounts without touching his documented work among the Unangan.

What we can say confidently

• Ioann Veniaminov served as priest on Unalaska from 1824 and at Sitka from 1834, and in 1840 became bishop of a new diocese with its see at Sitka.
• With Ivan Pan'kov he created a Cyrillic writing system for Aleut and translated Christian texts into it; his Aleut books were printed in 1840.
• His written instructions forbade coercion, bribery and promises of tax exemption in mission, and required free consent and full instruction before baptism.
• He was Metropolitan of Moscow from 1868 to his death on 31 March 1879 and led the founding of the Orthodox Missionary Society in 1870.
• The Russian Orthodox Church glorified him on 6 October 1977 at the request of the OCA.
• The mission he served was financed by the Russian-American Company, under whose rule the Unangan had already suffered catastrophic losses.

What remains disputed

• How far the Orthodox mission protected Native Alaskans and how far it served Russian colonial aims.
• Exact dates for some early events, including his arrival on Unalaska and when his first Aleut works were completed.
• How much the Tlingit conversions of the 1830s and 1840s reflected faith rather than practical alliance with the Russians.
• What exactly Smirennikov experienced on Akun in 1828; the only account is Veniaminov's firsthand report of what he was told.

Conclusion

St Innocent paddled between islands in a kayak, built clocks and church furniture with his own hands, and taught a people to read the Gospel in their own words. He also served an empire and shared some of its prejudices. The Church does not ask us to make him spotless. It asks us to see in him what he asked of his missionaries: patience, humility, love for the people one serves, and trust that conversion "cometh not from us or from our skill, but directly and solely from God."⁵⁴ The Orthodox parishes that still anchor Aleutian village life show what that love achieved. Holy Hierarch Innocent, pray to God for us.

Notes

1. Orthodox Church in America, article on St Innocent adapted from the English translation of the Act of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, English edition, issue 1 (1978), oca.org/fs/act-holy-synod-russian-orthodox-church-st-innocent. Cited below as "Act." ↩
2. OCA, "Glorification of Saint Innocent, Metropolitan of Moscow, Enlightener of the Aleuts, Apostle to the Americas" (6 October), oca.org; same account in the Russian Life, azbyka.ru. The OCA life dates his entry into the seminary to 1806, the Act to 1807. ↩
3. Act. The OCA life gives 13 May 1817 for his diaconal ordination, the Act 18 May. His wife's name, Catherine, is given in M. Nectaria McLees, "The Angels of Akun," Road to Emmaus 8, no. 2 (#29), note 5. ↩
4. Act (English wording "Blessed be the name of the Lord!"); his fuller recollection, including the traveler Ivan Kriukov, is quoted in the Russian Life, "Svyatitel' Innokentii (Veniaminov), mitropolit Moskovskii," azbyka.ru (translated here). ↩
5. Act. The City of Unalaska gives 24 July 1824 (note 15). ↩
6. Act (church begun July 1825, consecrated the following July); Russian Life, azbyka.ru (altar and iconostasis made by his hands). ↩
7. Act, quoting his letter to the bishop of Irkutsk about Unga, 1828. ↩
8. Act (transfer November 1834; departure for St Petersburg; wife's death 24 November 1838; Philaret's words). The Russian Life gives his departure from Sitka as 8 November 1838. ↩
9. Act; OCA, "Glorification." ↩
10. Act; OCA, "Glorification"; Russian Life, azbyka.ru (first Yakut service 19 July 1859). ↩
11. Act, quoting his address of 26 May 1868. Appointment of 5 January 1868 also in OCA, "Glorification," and the Russian Life. ↩
12. "Almost blind" (pochti slep) and the society's opening in Moscow in January 1870: Russian Life, azbyka.ru (translated here). Garrett (note 46) also calls him blind by 1868 and says he "used his influence to found the Russian Missionary Society, whose local chapters throughout the empire raised funds to support home and foreign missions." ↩
13. Act; OCA, "Repose of Saint Innocent" (31 March), oca.org. ↩
14. Aleutian Pribilof Islands Community Development Association (APICDA), "Aleut Culture," apicda.com. ↩
15. City of Unalaska, "History," ci.unalaska.ak.us. ↩
16. Library of Congress, In the Beginning Was the Word: The Russian Church and Native Alaskan Cultures, "Crown and Commerce in Russian America," loc.gov/exhibits/russian. ↩
17. Michael Oleksa, "Alaskan Missionary Spirituality," missions.hchc.edu (from his introduction to Alaskan Missionary Spirituality, Paulist Press, 1987). ↩
18. APICDA, "Aleut Culture." ↩
19. Act. ↩
20. Library of Congress, In the Beginning Was the Word, "Preserving Native Languages," items 81-85. ↩
21. Ivan Veniaminov, Notes on the Islands of the Unalashka District, trans. Lydia T. Black and R. H. Geoghegan, ed. Richard A. Pierce (Fairbanks: Elmer E. Rasmuson Library Translation Program; Kingston, ON: Limestone Press, 1984), catalogue record, CiNii Books. ↩
22. Library of Congress, "Preserving Native Languages," items 76-77. ↩
23. McLees, "The Angels of Akun," 21 and sources note 4 (Ivan Barsukov, Innokentii, mitropolit Moskovskii i Kolomenskii, Moscow, 1883). ↩
24. "Instruction of the Most Rev. Metropolitan Innocentius, formerly Archbishop of Kamtchatka, of the Kuril and Aleutian Islands, to the Missionary at Nushagak, Theophanus, Hieromonk," Russian Orthodox American Messenger 3, nos. 20-21 (October-November 1899), reproduced at hesychia.eu (two parts). Translator not named. ↩
25. Act (note 1). ↩
26. City of Unalaska (note 15); Act; Library of Congress, "Preserving Native Languages" (catechism "published in 1834"; the printed copy it displays is St Petersburg, 1840). ↩
27. Library of Congress, "Preserving Native Languages" (alphabet; help of the toion Ivan Pan'kov); Act (Synod permission to print, 1840); McLees, "The Angels of Akun," 21 (alphabet devised "at first together with his translator, Ivan Pan'kov"). ↩
28. Library of Congress, "Preserving Native Languages." ↩
29. National Park Service, Lost Villages of the Eastern Aleutians: Biorka, Kashega, Makushin, chapter 5, "Ends and Beginnings," nps.gov/aleu. ↩
30. Act; Library of Congress, In the Beginning Was the Word, "Native Education." ↩
31. Act, quoting his letter of 30 April 1842 (school opened 17 December). ↩
32. Instruction to Theophanus (note 24), parts I and II. ↩
33. Innocent (Veniaminov), "Of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven" (excerpt from Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven), Orthodox America 4, issue 35, roca.org. Translator not named. ↩
34. Letter to the Ober-Procurator, 5 December 1867, in Paul D. Garrett, St. Innocent: Apostle to America (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1979), 275-77, as reproduced by Matthew Namee, "St. Innocent's Vision," Orthodox History, August 2009; date from OCA, "150th anniversary of the establishment of the North American diocesan see in San Francisco," oca.org. ↩
35. OCA, "150th anniversary" (see moved 1872; some English services under Bishop John); Namee, "St. Innocent's Vision" ("the use of English did not become the norm"). ↩
36. Act. ↩
37. Russian Life, azbyka.ru (translated here). ↩
38. OCA, "Glorification" ("baptized ten thousand people"); the Russian Life says "tens of thousands." ↩
39. Russian Life, azbyka.ru (translated here). ↩
40. McLees, "The Angels of Akun," quoting his report to the Synod (trans. Inna Belov and M. Nectaria McLees) and his June 1828 letter to Archbishop Michael of Irkutsk (trans. Lydia T. Black, first published in Orthodox Alaska 8, 1978; Tobolsk copy dated 5 November 1829). ↩
41. Act. ↩
42. Act; Russian Life, azbyka.ru (OCA Synod raised the question in March 1974 and wrote to Moscow on 8 May 1974; decision dated 23 September old style, 6 October new style). ↩
43. Act (OCA's adapted text). ↩
44. OCA, "Repose of Saint Innocent" and "Glorification"; Russian Life, azbyka.ru ("31 marta/13 aprelya," "23 sentyabrya/6 oktyabrya"). ↩
45. "Of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven," Orthodox America (note 33). ↩
46. Paul D. Garrett, "Innocent, Veniaminov (Ivan Popov-Veniaminov)," in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 320, reprinted by the Boston University School of Theology, History of Missiology. ↩
47. Stephen Haycox, review of Ilya Vinkovetsky, Russian America: An Overseas Colony of a Continental Empire, 1804-1867 (Oxford University Press, 2011), BC Studies, no. 178 (Summer 2013). ↩
48. Instruction to Theophanus, part II. ↩
49. Instruction to Theophanus; Library of Congress, "Native Education" (Sheldon Jackson's English-only policy from 1885); APICDA, "Aleut Culture." ↩
50. Instruction to Theophanus, part I. ↩
51. Instruction to Theophanus, part II. ↩
52. National Library of Medicine, Native Voices timeline, "1834: Priest gains Tlingit support by offering vaccinations," nlm.nih.gov; Russian Life, azbyka.ru. ↩
53. University of Washington Press, description of Sergei Kan, Memory Eternal: Tlingit Culture and Russian Orthodox Christianity through Two Centuries, uwapress.uw.edu. ↩
54. Instruction to Theophanus, part I. ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Innocent (Veniaminov). "Instruction ... to the Missionary at Nushagak, Theophanus, Hieromonk." Russian Orthodox American Messenger 3, nos. 20-21 (1899). Reproduced at hesychia.eu.
• Innocent (Veniaminov). "Of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven" (excerpt). Orthodox America 4, issue 35. roca.org.
• Veniaminov, Ioann. Letter to Archbishop Michael of Irkutsk, June 1828, and report to the Holy Synod, in M. Nectaria McLees, "The Angels of Akun," Road to Emmaus 8, no. 2 (#29). roadtoemmaus.net.
• Veniaminov, Ioann. Letter to the Ober-Procurator, 5 December 1867, in Garrett, St. Innocent: Apostle to America, 275-77, as reproduced by Matthew Namee, "St. Innocent's Vision," Orthodox History, 2009. orthodoxhistory.org.
• Veniaminov, Ivan. Notes on the Islands of the Unalashka District. Trans. Lydia T. Black and R. H. Geoghegan. Ed. Richard A. Pierce. Fairbanks and Kingston, ON: Limestone Press, 1984. (Catalogue record, CiNii Books.)
• Library of Congress. In the Beginning Was the Word: The Russian Church and Native Alaskan Cultures. Online exhibition of the Alaskan Russian Church Archives. loc.gov/exhibits/russian.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. Act of glorification of St Innocent (1977), English translation in Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, no. 1 (1978), adapted at oca.org.
• Orthodox Church in America. "Repose of Saint Innocent" (31 March) and "Glorification of Saint Innocent" (6 October). Lives of the Saints, oca.org.
• Orthodox Church in America. "150th anniversary of the establishment of the North American diocesan see in San Francisco." oca.org.
• "Svyatitel' Innokentii (Veniaminov), mitropolit Moskovskii." Pravoslavnyi kalendar', azbyka.ru.
• Garrett, Paul D. "Innocent, Veniaminov (Ivan Popov-Veniaminov)." In Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson, 320. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998. Reprinted at bu.edu/missiology.
• Oleksa, Michael. "Alaskan Missionary Spirituality." missions.hchc.edu.

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Haycox, Stephen. Review of Russian America: An Overseas Colony of a Continental Empire, 1804-1867, by Ilya Vinkovetsky. BC Studies, no. 178 (2013).
• Kan, Sergei. Memory Eternal: Tlingit Culture and Russian Orthodox Christianity through Two Centuries. Seattle: University of Washington Press. (Publisher's description consulted.)
• National Park Service. Lost Villages of the Eastern Aleutians: Biorka, Kashega, Makushin, chapter 5. nps.gov/aleu.
• National Library of Medicine. Native Voices timeline, "1834: Priest gains Tlingit support by offering vaccinations." nlm.nih.gov.

Sources from the tradition discussed (Unangan)

• Aleutian Pribilof Islands Community Development Association. "Aleut Culture." apicda.com.
• City of Unalaska. "History." ci.unalaska.ak.us.