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Thank you.

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It's an honor to be
here, and virtually too,

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in Tucson, though I'm not--

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I'm also right now at
the Muskogee Creek Nation

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Reservation.

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But anyway, it's
great to be here.

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And I think about
this anthology,

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it's many things to many
people, and especially

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for Native peoples.

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But it says-- even
the existence of it

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says that we belong to
American literature.

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We are part of
American literature.

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We are the roots.

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You'll find the roots
of American poetry

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here in these pages.

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I'm going to begin, and even
the beginning, at the beginning,

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in the introduction, we
say, we begin with the land.

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And that's true for everyone.

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We acknowledge that
as Indigenous peoples

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because our cultures are still--

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we did not turn our backs.

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We were so embedded here.

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We were appointed keepers
of these particular lands.

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But it's hard to figure
out where to start.

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Every time I open the anthology,
there's something else

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that, even though
we've edited it,

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we've read, and at one point--

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at one point during the
final editing process,

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LeAnne, Jennifer, and I
read the whole book aloud.

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Because, ultimately,
language, whether it's--

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the roots are oral, out
of the oral tradition.

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And poetry is essentially oral.

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I think of books of poetry
as, really, oral events.

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