WEBVTT

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Oh, thank you so much.

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I'm really honored to be here
and be among friends, I think.

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I've known you all
for so many years.

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And I feel like I'm with family.

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And especially lately,
working on the anthology,

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"When the Light of
the World was Subdued,

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Our Songs Came Through."

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I think Joy, and I, and Jennifer
met for at least every 2

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to 3 weeks throughout the
year, preceding it's finished--

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and finishing the work.

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I mean, this is, as Bojan said,
this is an enormous undertaking

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to pool two centuries of work
from poets, Native poets,

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across the United States.

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And it was in--

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and the way I feel about it is
that it's sacred work, really

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especially our ancestor poets.

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So I'm sometimes discovering
new things in reading the book.

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It feels like a
discovery every day.

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So again, I'm
delighted to be here.

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Today, while I was
on the internet,

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I received a call from the
AIW for papers about "land

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is our first teacher."

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It's a conference that will go
on in First Nations in Canada

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next year.

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Land is our first teacher.

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And this was something that
was built into our discussions

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about putting the
anthology together.

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It's region by region
by region, land by land.

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And I've written a
great deal about that.

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Land is our first teacher.

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Our first gardeners,
women worked the land.

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Our first mound builders,
architects in the southeast

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created spaces on the land
for teaching and for living.

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So land has meant a great
deal to all of our tribes

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and all of our people.

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So it also continued
to guide us in putting

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this anthology together,
almost like a guiding hand.

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The land helped us bring
this work into being.