Colleen E Swan

(Please ignore the "Hire Me" button. About.me made some changes that I do not approve of.)

Inupiaq (Alaska Native) living in Kivalina, Alaska. I strive to work out differences and find solutions and am usually in the middle of trying to work out strategies to the most difficult situations. I am a volunteer strategist and just started as Dean for the five (5) Arctic Coast Deanery churches to enhance ministry and other administrative management processes. I have also been appointed to serve on the Commission on Ministry for the Diocese of Alaska.

I am a volunteer Episcopal Church Women. Kivalina Search and Rescue and the Kivalina Volunteer Fire Department.

I have been involved in several documentaries about our dire situation caused by climate disruption. The most recent one is called, "Fault Lines: When the Water Took the Land," by Aljeera-America.

As of 2008, the federal government has given us less than 15 years to continue to inhabit Kivalina but provides little to assure us that they will step in because that is the estimated lifespan of the rock revetment that the USACE constructed after much land failure beginning in 2004. That's the status of my home town.

I am a single divorced mother of 6 (5 adults, 1 teen) and a grandmother of 10. I have a large extended family.