The Arctic Ice Climate Consortium

 Raised in Alaska, I graduated HS early to go work the Exxon Valdez disaster to help pay for college, and be involved in the bioremediation  & restoration. 
Other than a few jobs in retail, & horrible stint as a nanny, my career has been centered around the North Slope of Arctic Alaska, as was my my Dad’s, and the family business~ Environmental consulting and large scale clean up within AK. 
During the spill, I didn’t know my future very best friend, was hundreds of miles down the coast, camping on the beach, waiting for work at the Sealife Rescue operations in Seward. 
I was based at the Exxon Valdez Man Camp~ it was not the dream I had of saving Sea Life; I was “just a girl” and mass positions had to be filled carefully; Given my familial tie, there were jobs I was highly qualified and eager to do, but my dad had last say with 1 phone call~ He used it liberally. They attempted to avoid gender based  injury or lawsuit,of which there were many... I was safely tucked away at the Exxon Man Camp, doing billeting, paperwork, and oddly making donuts for half my night shift. 
But I had to be involved~ being involved in any way was part of the solution to the unfathomable disaster to Alaska’s coastal lands and marine life. 
Between travel, a lot of time spent in the North Slope Inupiat villages, then the pursuit of furthering NG education in Environmental science. 
Many years later I met and immediately Marc Della Rocca became my best friend; hours of talking about the Alaska Experience,  in of all places Arizona. 
He is the only true genius & genuine world citizen of sustainability & deep Stewart of the planet I’ve ever known. No place more than his love of Alaska.  
Quietly. At 4:30 am, he goes to commune and be in nature~ before going to work, where he has made, & continues to make Coconino County AZ, a better place. 
He’s finished his time there and ready to move on. 
My path (in all defiance) lead me back to my origin of AK. and specifically, the indigenous people of the Arctic. 
I live in Homer Alaska, a small rural coastal hamlet, in the South East. 1 coastal hamlet over from where Marc was saving marine mammals during the Spill. He was one of the last employees to remain and escorted the otters & seals unable to be released back into the wild, to new homes for care; Point Defiance, and places beyond. Not bad fir a soulfully searching young man with multiple degrees under his belt already. 
The site that was the marine mammal rescue for the Spill is now the Seward Sealife Center; still rescuing & rehabilitating more in need seals, otters, puffins, and octopus, etc, than ever before. 
My focus has remained far North Arctic & the NSB of Alaska, the land, and it’s indigenous people; Both our passions are uniquely linked to the travesty of climate change: And the invaluable resource that does not currently exist in the equation. 
The indigenous people of the Arctic. 
If we cannot learn from me these highly specialized remote “canaries in the mine” and the people who have lived subsistence life, in harmony with the land since humans first ever inhabited the land~ We will kill the remainder of our planet, and lose these incredibly vital, remote Arctic environments forever~Ultimately destroying our earth faster. 
I lived in the village of Kaktovik AK first; the full immersion~ arriving on a mail delivery plane, with Arctic gear, and mass testing equipment to identify & remediate waste from modern world & military intrusion into this pristine village. Kaktovik had already been mandatorily relocated as a village, many many years prior due to coastal erosion. I was ultimately bestowed an Inupiat name. A profound moment of clarifying life direction. 
The entire Arctic way of life is facing  a harder, and faster moving threatening reality; Climate change is destroying entire cultures, villages, a way of life lived for thousands of years due to permafrost depletion, climate change, lack of ice, coastal erosion, die off and altered migratory patterns that have supported them thousands & thousands of years before Russia ever existed, to sell this vast frozen land to America. 
But we are not utilizing the input, example, cultural knowledge and lifestyles maintained of some of the most profoundly wise & knowledgeable people on the planet in regards to Global Warming & Climate Change. 
We are not putting the time and attention into the most valuable resources we have that are fundamental, to climate change policy. We are still negating the thousands of years of passed down knowledge, cultures, and the most delicate but extreme environment on the planet~ to assist in showing us why, how, and what is at stake. We are neglecting an incredible resource, again, as one desperately needed in the fight against depletion of our planet & global warming based on industrialization and irresponsible carbon foot print; Even in this planetary direness, we are not using one of our biggest assets in the fight, and the first ecosystem & lands that can guide us to balance & reduction. 
Likewise, the first environment on our planet where climatological carbon based footprint, WILL unalterably change the entire planet. 
Plainly, when the ice ceases to exist, our planet will cease to be inhabitable. 
I am based in Homer, AK~ the last of my family, in the family home. I plan on ultimately working throughout the Arctic 10-11 mo a year when the program is fully operational. 
The very large home left to me,  is homebase for this endeavor. I arrived here to just visit my dad & write, leaving my loved home in Southern California following divorce. 
We do not have the cohesive bridges between the abundance of the Academic Study, and the native population~ It stretches the entire Arctic environment, not just the US. 
A consortium and bridge must be created between all of the Arctic, not only the academics, the science & monitor of the fast melting and depletion of this vital planetary ecosystem, but those who know it best, and count on its existence for their way of life. 
We have again, not included those who know it best, in our attempts to address and arrest global warming. Not just the people who live there, the astonishing change in that environment, and all it’s inhabitants~ are key to this discussion. 
It my sincerest wish to partner with Tin Shed, to continue the pursuit of our deep need to upscale the study & preservation of this vital environment, it’s first peoples, their vast knowledge (which is not as pack mules & sled dogs in the process) but engaged resource with the academic world of the condition and preservation of this ecosystem & environment, for better understanding and contribution to the global warming crisis. 
The science of Ice, and the vast portion of our planets reliance on these lands remaining~ to be an integral part of the education, and tangible push in the battle against global warming. 
I hope you will consider my proposal and I would be thrilled to come discuss it, and the plan for this project. It’s oh so very vital and still a fully overlooked resource desperately needed in Climate Change.