9:00 AM – Welcome and Introductions – Innokentia and Mother Macrina
9:15 – Keynote Speaker - Maria Sakovich (MPH, MA)
Celebrating the Fourth of July: Orthodox Services Return to the Chapel at Fort Ross”. Orthodoxy returned to the former Russian settlement, Fort Ross, on the American Independence Day holiday, Fourth of July 1925. Three factors combined to create the resumption of services in the chapel: an invitation from the American fraternal organization Native Sons of the Golden West, newly arrived refugee-emigrants from the former Russian Empire after the Bolshevik revolution, and the inspiration of the rector of Holy Trinity Cathedral in San Francisco, Archpriest Vladimir Sakovich, to meld a moment in time of Russia’s and California’s past with the present and future for his struggling-to-adjust parishioners. Over the past 100 years, this singular event has evolved into an annual celebration. Maria Sakovich, historian and granddaughter of Fr. Vladimir, will speak about the early years of this evolution.
Maria is a public historian and independent scholar who researches, writes, and lectures on immigration, family, and community history. For many years she has been documenting the history of the refuge-emigrants from Russia who arrived in San Francisco in the 1920s and 1930s. Their experiences have been included in several of her articles which have appeared in anthologies and journals as well as online. The history of two California State Parks, Fort Ross and Angel Island, specifically the Immigration Station, have featured prominently in her work including many efforts in regards to Fort Ross. She has recently embarked on writing a biographical portrait of her grandfather, Archpriest Vladimir Sakovich who began the pilgrimages to Fort Ross in 1925, and his refugee-emigrant parishioners. She is a member of the Institute for Historical Study.
10:15 – 10:30 - break
10:30 – Speaker – Very Reverand Archpriest Fr John – St Herman of Alaska Church, Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania
Fr John is the Head Curator at St Tikhon’s Monastery in Pennsylvania. He will offer insights to St Innocent and his time at Fort Ross as well as the canonization of St Peter the Aleut. Fr John, who lived in Alaska wrote the canonization papers for St Peter the Aleut. Fr John has many stories about these two saints as well as the history, the items that were once in the hands of these Saints, and the understanding of Orthodoxy at Fort Ross.
More to Come – check back
11:00 – 11:15 break
11:15 to 12:00 PM – Dr Susan Morris
Susan Morris is an independent researcher who has been involved in Channel Islands and California coastal research projects since 1987. She earned a BA from CSUN and a Certificate in Archaeology from UCLA. Morris conducted scientific field research on seven of California’s eight Channel Islands, including geology, paleontology, archaeology, and biology projects. Morris led a sea cave survey project on Santa Rosa Island and participated in the 1994 excavation of the nearly complete fossilized remains of a Pygmy mammoth on Santa Rosa, creating the on-site illustration of the mammoth skeleton. Her focus since 2010 has been historical research on the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island, the model for Scott O’Dell’s protagonist in Island of the Blue Dolphins. The author of numerous articles on the Lone Woman and her people, the Nicoleños, Morris was the lead researcher for the Channel Islands National Park Island of the Blue Dolphins website. Her research on the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island was featured in the November 2022 issue of National Geographic History magazine and in the Spring 2025 issue of American Archaeology magazine.
The story of the Alaska native man, Chukagnak, who came to be known as St. Peter, the Aleut, has long fascinated generations of the Russian Orthodox faithful as well as historians and others interested in early California and Alaska history. Details about Chukagnak’s life and tragic death were speculative until recent review of 19th century Spanish and Russian manuscripts revealed the location of his violent death, the pueblo of Los Angeles, in 1815. Described in the native narrative of another Alaska native, Chukagnak’s murder followed his refusal to renounce his Russian Orthodox faith and accept Roman Catholicism, even under torture. His steadfastness, and Chukagnak’s resulting martyrdom for the sake of his religious beliefs, led the Orthodox Church of America to elevate him to the status of St. Peter, the Aleut, in 1980. I will discuss the details from the Spanish and Russian documents that illuminate the California coastal locations of these momentous events, and how these events reflect the conflicts that occurred between native peoples, the Spanish colonists, and the Russian otter hunting crews, during contact on the west coast of North American in the first half of the 19th century.
12:00 PM to 1:00 Lunch
1:00 to 1:30 - Dr. Nina Bogdan
"Orthodoxy spans many cultures, and San Francisco, as an urban space and port city attracting people from all over the world, boasted a multi-ethnic Orthodox community from its founding. The nineteenth-century Russian presence in the broader region spanning Alaska and northern California also played a role in the creation of an interconnected “mental territory,” where Orthodox faithful lived and interacted, drawing succeeding groups of immigrants and refugees. The foundations of an Orthodox community were established in northern California prior to the arrival of tens of thousands of Russians in the years following the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia. As succeeding waves of Russian Orthodox settled in northern California throughout the early twentieth century, Fort Ross, founded as a commercial and agricultural endeavor, became a place of celebration of faith and culture." Dr. Nina Bogdan
Dr. Nina Bogdan is a historian, translator, and consultant. Her latest book, Before We Disappear into Oblivion: San Francisco’s Russian Diaspora from Revolution to Cold War (McGill-Queen’s University Press, May 2025), explores identity formation among Russian émigrés and immigrants in the noted period. A recent project she completed (2024) is a “Russian American Historic Context Statement” for the San Francisco Planning Department as part of the Citywide Cultural Resources Survey. The 160-page statement discusses the historical, geographic, political, and social forces involved in the establishment of Russian American communities in San Francisco, focusing on community adaptation of the urban built environment to house their institutions and histories. In 2015, she participated as a researcher/translator to a study for the National Park Service of Alaska, under the auspices of the Drachman Institute, College of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture, University of Arizona: “Developing an Historic Ecclesiastical Landscape Study for Russian America from approximately 1840 to 1920” (2015-2017). Dr. Bogdan holds a PhD in U.S. History from the University of Arizona and an MA in Political Science (University of California, Davis). She taught U.S. History at the University of Arizona from 2018 to 2023. Her earlier work includes coauthoring a photographic history of the Russian community, Russian San Francisco, an Images of America series book (2010). She also wrote and self-published her family history, The Desolation of Exile: A Russian Family’s Odyssey (2013), traveling to Ukraine, Russia, and China to complete her research.
Before We Disappear into Oblivion | McGill-Queen’s University Press
1:30 to 1:45 Break
1:45 to 2:15 – Breck Parkman – Retired California State Park Senior Archeologist Northern District
1:30 to 1:45 Break
1:45 to 2:30 – Breck Parkman
Father Veniaminov’s Visit to Fort Ross in 1989
Abstract
On a pleasant summer day in 1989, a very special man came to visit Fort Ross. He was Father Veniaminov, a lowly Russian monk who President Gorbachev had personally permitted to visit California and Alaska. Here was an elderly white-haired man who resembled an antique rendition of Saint Nicholas. The good Father had served for most of his life as a surgeon in the Soviet Merchant Marine, from which he had recently retired. In earlier times, Veniaminov had sailed along the west coast of the United States while dreaming of someday coming ashore. He was accompanied in his visit to Fort Ross by the Russian Orthodox Church’s highest-ranking official in North America, Metropolitan Theodosius from Philadelphia. A third priest served as a translator. Veniaminov, a lowly monk, got the VIP treatment in America because of who he was, or rather, who he was related to. His great-great-great-grandfather was Father Veniaminov, the man known as Saint Innocent of Alaska. Saint Innocent is remembered as having brought Christianity to Alaska. In 1836, Vianiminov had visited Fort Ross and spent several weeks performing marriages and attending to the settlement’s spiritual needs. He was the only Russian Orthodox priest to visit Fort Ross during the historic Russian occupation (1812-1841).
Breck Parkman will discuss this 1989 visit by Father Veniaminov, including thoughts about the significance of his visit. He will also talk about the construction in 2012 of the “New Russian Windmill” and why he views the windmill as a peace monument dedicated to goodwill between nations.
About the Speaker
Breck Parkman
Breck Parkman has worked as an archaeologist for over fifty years, including forty years as a Senior State Archaeologist with California State Parks. His work has taken him to all corners of the state, and it’s spanned much of the world, including the Canadian Plains; the South Coast of Peru; the Australian Outback, and Central Siberia. Breck was the Director of the UNESCO-sponsored Fort Ross ~ Global Village Project, which brought Russian and American children together on the Internet in the study of Fort Ross. He’s travelled extensively in Russia, including taking the train from Beijing to Moscow in the middle of winter. Breck’s a longtime Research Associate in the Archaeological Research Facility at U.C. Berkeley and a Past President of the Society for California Archaeology. Currently, he sits on the Board of Directors of the Native California Research Institute. His research interests are broad and range from Ice Age megafauna and ancient forests to the archaeology of “hippie” communes and the Grateful Dead. Most recently, he’s studied the White Russian diaspora that followed the Russian Civil War. Breck’s work has been featured in hundreds of newspaper, radio, and TV interviews and he’s appeared in a variety of films and documentaries as well. Now retired, Breck keeps active with his research, publication, and public speaking. He and his teenage son live on a hillside near Sonoma, overlooking the Valley of the Moon.
2:30 to 3:15 Innokentia (Robin) Wellman – Retired Fort Ross.
Innokentia will share her research and stories of the five Saints known to have walked at Fort Ross. She will also share general history of Fort Ross, stories of the past and present.
For 30 years she worked at Fort Ross as the lead planner of events, research, and the everyday needs for the park. This included sharing stories of the people who lived and worked at Colony Ross, their little nuances of everyday life with thousands of visitors, school children, and academics as well as the orthodox church. Innokentia has traveled to Russia and Europe sharing the Fort Ross life, and orthodoxy of Fort Ross. She is honored to offer a few of those insights about the Saints and the everyday people who make up this story. In 2021 Innokentia (Robin Joy) became a newly baptized Orthodox Christian in the homeland of St Innocent, a little town called Anga Siberia, on the birthdate of St Innocent September 8th, by His Eminence Metropolitan Maximilian.
3:15 – 4:00 Open Discussion and Questions
4:30 or 5pm Vespers for anyone who would like to stay.
