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[[Image:Innocent of Alaska.jpg|right|frame|St. Innocent of Alaska, depicted holding his book [http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/general/kingdomofheaven.aspx "The Indication of the Way Into the Kingdom of Heaven"], which he wrote in [http://www.asna.ca/alaska/aleut/indication-of-the-pathway.pdf Aleut], but which became a popular text in [http://www.asna.ca/alaska/tlingit/indication-pathway-part-1.pdf Tlingit] and [[http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/russian/king_r.htm Russian ] as well.]]
Our father among the saints '''Innocent of Alaska''', [[Equal-to-the-Apostles]] and [[Enlightener]] of North America (1797-1879), was a Russian Orthodox [[priest]], [[bishop]], [[archbishop]], and [[Metropolitan]] of Moscow and all Russia. He is known for his missionary work, scholarship, and leadership in Alaska and the Russian Far East during the 1800s. He is known for his great zeal for his work as well as his great abilities as a scholar, linguist, and administrator. He was a missionary, later a bishop and archbishop in Alaska and the Russian Far East. He learned several native languages and was the author of many of the earliest scholarly works about the natives and their languages, as well as dictionaries and religious works in these languages. He also translated parts of the [[Bible]] into several native languages.
Father John's parish included the island of Unalaska and the neighboring Fox Islands and Pribilof Islands, whose inhabitants had been converted to Christianity before his arrival, but retained many of their pagan ways and customs. Father John often traveled between the islands in a canoe, battling the stormy Gulf of Alaska.
His travels over the islands greatly enhanced Father John Veniaminov's familiarity with the local dialects. In a short time he mastered six of the dialects. He devised an alphabet of Cyrillic letters for the most widespread dialect, the Unagan dialect of Aleut and, in 1828, translated portions the ''[http://www.asna.ca/alaska/aleut/gospel-saint-matthew.pdf Holy Gospel of the Bible St. Matthew]'' and other church material materials into that dialect, which were eventually published in 1840 with the blessing of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1829, he journeyed to the Bering Sea coast of the Alaskan mainland and preached to the people there.
In 1834, Father John was transferred to Sitka Island, to the town of Novoarkhangelsk, later called Sitka. He devoted himself the Tlingit people and studied their language and customs. His studies there produced the scholarly works ''[http://www.asna.ca/alaska/research/zamechaniya.pdf Notes on the Kolushchan and Kodiak Tongues]'' and ''Other Dialects of the Russo-American Territories, with a Russian-Kolushchan Glossary''.
