How can one inject the sqlite3 keyword DISTINCT into an Android ContentProvider's query?

Question

I have a SQL statement that I can use to return distinct rows from my Android sqlite3 database and I would like to pass it through the ContentProvider's query.

For example:

select lastName from peopleTable where upper(lastName) like upper("%smith%");

needs to be

select DISTINCT lastName from peopleTable where upper(lastName) like upper("%smith%");

Is there a clean way to pass the extra keywords to the select statement?