Kalender

Charles Lock
Professor of English Literature, University of Copenhagen

The lecture investigates the phenomenon of 'indigenization', the transformation of externally imposed cultural forms into a defining and essential aspect of tradition. The indigenous population of the Aleutian islands of south-western Alaska were converted to Orthodoxy from the 1780s; in 1867 all Russian missionaries were compelled to leave Alaska and Protestantism was imposed. The Aleuts insisted that Orthodoxy was essential to their native identity, and they maintain this religious and cultural allegiance to the present.