“This monument is not about telling our history, it’s not about acknowledging it. It’s a monument, it’s a place of honor for someone who does not deserve our honor,” said Dionne Yeidikoo’aa Brady-Howard, one of the members of the Tlingit population, about the statue of Russian settler Alexander Baranov, the first general manager of the Russian-American Company, who actually founded the city in 1799 as the Fort of St. Michael (it was later named 'Novo-Arkhangelsk').
The statue, donated to the city in 1989 (to mark the 190th anniversary of Sitka) by one of its families, was placed in a seaside park in Sitka. But recently, in late June 2020, members of the native Tlingit population asked the city to relocate it.
But Alexander Baranov was a far more complex man than today's Alaskans know, and certainly did not harbor the kind of ill will or genocidal intent as might be associated with a run-of-the-mill colonist.
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