The 2006 Arrington-Prucha Award given by the Western History Association goes to Raymond A. Bucko, S.J., for his essay “St. Peter the Aleut: Sacred Iconography and the Iconography of Violence,”
We agreed with the description offered by the Boletin’s editors, Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz. In their words: “Focusing on a little-studied episode relating to the Russian experience in colonial Alta California, this article engages a central problem in the entire European colonial experience in the Americas---the relationship between religion, violence, and historical memory.
[Bucko] skillfully blends the perspectives of the Russian and Spanish colonizers and the indigenous Kodiak and Aleut people of Alaska who were transported to Alta California. His analysis ranges widely over time and space, as he includes materials from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from Russia, Alaska, and California. The theoretical and analytical implications of [Bucko’s] analysis extend far beyond nineteenth century colonial Alta California.”
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