It's fitting that I discuss this program at a time of new beginnings because that's exactly where we at CIRI find ourselves. We have built a strong foundation for our corporation, and we have succeeded beyond our expectations in some of our investments.

Through our two special distributions, we have completed one of our key corporate goals ­ to make a positive difference in the lives of our shareholders. As a matter of fact, over 29 years we have paid out more than $670 million in dividends to shareholders. This is a truly stunning record unmatched among any of the other Native corporations. It's a record we achieved by sound investments, determined effort and a lot of teamwork. We gained from lessons we learned in the school of hard knocks, and yes, we were blessed with some good luck, too. And it's a record we plan to do everything in our power to repeat.

Can I promise you we'll repeat this record? You know the answer to that. We'll do our best, but there are no guarantees. And it's a slow process. But even if we knew we could duplicate our previous success, there are two major changes we face that will act as brakes. First, because we've used up our remaining tax loss carry forwards, in the future CIRI will be required to pay taxes on its profits. Second, in the future, shareholders should expect that their dividends will be considered taxable income. That means even repeating our own profit record would mean less money for you after taxes.

We've been giving a lot of thought to this situation, and we've looked at many scenarios. Under any of the scenarios, future dividends will likely decrease over time because of the recent large payout, because we are unlikely to match our own record annually, and because of the taxation issues. What we have developed, however, is a plan to reduce the tax burden on a portion of CIRI's portfolio traditionally reserved for lower-risk, cash flow investments. As a general rule in business, higher risk investments carry a greater possibility of higher returns (and losses), while those with lower risk typically bring in lower returns.

Our plan is to set aside money in a special trust, called a settlement trust, to pay distributions into the future. As a matter of fact, we want to create two settlement trusts, one to provide long-term distributions to all shareholders, and the second an "elders" trust to provide fixed payments to original CIRI shareholders age 65 and older who still hold CIRI shares. Both of these trusts will require a shareholder vote.

I'm pleased to report that recent legislation makes settlement trusts more advantageous from a tax standpoint. That has been one of the key stumbling blocks to the creation of settlement trusts in the past. Creating settlement trusts gives us a tax-advantaged way to set aside substantial sums of money for the long term in stable, lower-risk investments. And it means that we can focus our corporate efforts at CIRI on seeking out new business opportunities, which we expect will be higher risk and, we hope but cannot promise, will have higher returns to grow CIRI again more rapidly.

We are ending an era here at CIRI, an era that began with us overcoming obstacles many predicted were impossible to overcome. It is an era in which we built a strong foundation that allowed us to achieve major goals for our shareholders. As we celebrate the legacy of this era, we also must plan for the future. There are decisions that will be made ­ decisions that will greatly affect us all, much like those decisions that were made by our elders three decades ago.

We are truly blessed that we stand at this crossroads, looking back at major success and looking ahead to a bright future.

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