[APPLAUSE]
OK.
Thank you, Tyler.
And thank you on behalf of our project.
The Poetry Center has been an indispensable partner
in putting this enterprise together.
Our other two primary partners have
been the program in American Indian studies
and the Department of English.
I have other people to thank.
We thank them for the labor that they've given us,
the goodwill, the energy, and for the cash, which
we needed to pull this off.
Look at my list so that I don't forget anybody.
The American Indian Language Development Program,
The Institute of the Environment,
the Southwest Center, the College
of Social and Behavioral Science,
and the Confluence Center have all
made significant contributions enabling us to do this.
This Is the fourth and final reading in our series.
Prior readers as you can see on the poster have been Sherwin
Bitsui, Simon J Ortiz, Ofelia Zepeda, and our fourth reader
tonight will round out the readings in the series.
We are fortunate to have been able, as Tyler just announced,
to arrange a panel discussion of legal, cultural, historical
issues associated with water in American Indian communities
in large part because of the efforts of Robert
Hershey from the Law School.
And the event as Tyler announced will be on a Wednesday evening
here, April 15, at 7:00 PM.
Please attend that.
We have a poster as you can see for the series that
was designed by Paul Mirocha.
I want to thank Paul for designing the poster for us.
Paul signed copies of the poster,
and we've asked each of the readers to do the same.
So, if our reader tonight is still
able to move after all that we've put her through today,
and is able to sign them.
You could purchase one of these posters that's
signed by the artist and all four of the readers tonight.
The cost is $25 and 100% of that money
will go to a fund in the American Indian Studies program
to support the special commencement
ceremony that the program has.
I also need to very quickly, but sincerely, thank
the staff of American Indian Studies for the water
that they've carried for us in getting us to this point.
And that would be Anne Marie Jones and Anna Suh.
OK.
So now I'm going to turn this over
to my colleague Ofelia Zepeda, who will introduce our reader.