distinct date problem

Hi,
I'm having difficulty figuring this one out:
I have a table with record entries which all have a date attribute, looking 
something like '2000-11-11'.  What I want from my data base is a list of 
all the years that are present in this attribute in the relation.  So for 
example, if I had a couple of records like:
2000-11-05
1988-02-09
1999-10-06
2001-08-08
1999-09-27
2001-04-04
I would want the query to return:
2000-11-05
1988-02-09
1999-10-06
2001-08-08
So that I get only the distict years.
How does one go about this?
Thanks,
Lotus