September 18, 1997
Contact:
Yvonne French (202) 707-9191
Library of Congress Publication Describes Early Relations Between Russian Church and Native Americans in Alaska
The Library of Congress has published a book based on
research conducted for the 1994 exhibition "In the Beginning Was
the Word: The Russian Church and the Native Alaskan Cultures."
The publication, _The Russian Orthodox Church of Alaska and
the Aleutian Islands and Its Relation to Native American
Traditions--An Attempt at a Multicultural Society, 1794-1912_, is
based on an exhibition at the Library of Congress that celebrated
the 200th anniversary of the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska.
The exhibition showed documents selected from the large archives
of the church that are in the collections of the Library. It
included translations by missionary priests of the New Testament
from Russian and Church Slavonic (the sacred language of the
Russian Orthodox Church) into several native languages, including
two Aleut dialects, two varieties of Alaskan Eskimo, and Tlingit.
The translations were used in church and school. At some
parish schools, as many as four languages were studied: the
native tongue, English, Russian and Church Slavonic. Latin was
added in high school.
The 61-page publication, by Vyacheslav Ivanov, the curator
of the exhibition, includes a 12-page bibliography, and covers
such topics as translations into native languages and linguistic
studies, multilingual school education, and the social and
religious aspects of communication.
"The interaction of coexisting cultures may be seen at
different . . . levels. Thus a Christian image of St. John the
Baptist was carved by a native Aleut craftsman in his traditional
manner," wrote Mr. Ivanov, who reads several hundred languages,
ranging from Navaho to the indigenous languages of Siberian
tribes. As a member of the Soviet parliament, he represented the
liberal Moscow intellectuals, and as a former director of the
Library of Foreign Literature in Moscow he promoted in Russia the
central role that libraries play in democratic societies. Mr.
Ivanov currently is a professor of Slavic languages and
literatures at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The Russian Orthodox Church of Alaska and the Aleutian
Islands and Its Relation to Native American Traditions--An
Attempt at a Multicultural Society, 1794-1912 is available for
$4.25 from the U.S. Government Printing Office, Superintendent of
Documents, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954. When
ordering, cite stock number 030-001-00167-9. Credit card orders
are taken at (202) 512-1800 and fax orders at (202) 512-2250.
# # #
PR 97-141
9/18/97
ISSN 0731-3527