Questions dog new UC Board of Regents appointee

An esteemed author and scholar as well as a long-time tribal leader, Greg Sarris would seem to be a natural fit on the UC Board of Regents.

Sarris, 71, taught English and writing at three California universities, UCLA, Loyola Marymount and Sonoma State, for more than 30 years and authored several well-regard books, including Grand Avenue, a collection of short stories that was adapted into an HBO miniseries co-executive produced by Robert Redford. In 2020, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

His leadership of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria in Northern California has been no less impressive. Sarris is credited with securing federal recognition of the tribe in 2000, then leading it to build the ultra-successful Graton Resort & Casino in the Bay Area with the help of the ubiquitous Las Vegas gaming chain Station Casinos. He’s currently serving his 16th term as tribal chairman.

So, it was no surprise to see in late June that Gov. Gavin Newsom would appoint someone of Sarris’ stature and prominence to the Board of Regents. With that record, his confirmation by the Senate would seem to be a no brainer.

But scratch below the surface and you’ll find that Sarris has led such a controversial life that he could face scrutiny when his appointment is reviewed sometime next year.

For starters, Sarris has been dogged for years by allegations that he’s not actually Native American, including in a 2011 story in Capitol Weekly.

But scratch below the surface and you’ll find that Sarris has led such a controversial life that he could face scrutiny when his appointment is reviewed sometime next year.

Meanwhile, Donald Craig Mitchell, a California-educated attorney who once served as a former vice president and general counsel for the Alaska Federation of Natives, has accused Sarris of not only tricking Congress into recognizing his tribe and granting it gaming rights, but of also making up the very idea of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria to begin with.

“Other than in Greg Sarris’ imagination,” Mitchell wrote in his 2016 book, Wampum: How Indian Tribes, the Mafia, and an Inattentive Congress Invented Indian Gaming and Created a $28 Billion Gambling Empire, the tribe “had never existed.”

But perhaps most glaring was Sarris’ tortured relationship with Sonoma State, where he taught for 16 years, until 2021.

Under Sarris’ leadership, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria donated $1.5 million to Sonoma State in 2003 to endow a chair in Native American studies – or, well, Station Casinos advanced the money to the university for the tribe, which at the time was still trying to get its own casino up and running.

Who do you suppose Sonoma State eventually choose for the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria Endowed Chair in Creative Writing and Native American Studies? Why, Greg Sarris, the chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, of course.

A murky past

Sarris is the biological son of Mary Bernadette “Bunny” Hartman, a woman of German, Jewish and Irish descent, who came from a wealthy family in Laguna Beach. Only 17 years old and unmarried, Hartman died while giving birth to her son in Santa Rosa. She never revealed who fathered hir child.

Sarris was adopted by a local couple, George and Mary Sarris, who later told him about his mother. As a teenager, Sarris tracked down an old Laguna Beach High School yearbook from when his mother was a student and, based on the photographs inside, decided that his dad must have been one of Hartman’s peers: Emilio Hilario, Jr.

Hilario also was dead by the time Sarris came to that conclusion. But Sarris says some of Hilario’s surviving relatives told him that Hilario’s great grandparents were part Coast Miwok Indian and Pomo Indian. Based on that, Sarris apparently has claimed Native American heritage ever since.

But Sarris has no proof that Hilario is actually his father – and one of Hilario’s relatives took a DNA test that found she had no Native American ancestry at all.

“I have no Native American in me….So, if he’s related to me, he doesn’t either.”

“I have no Native American in me,” said Velia Navarro of Rosemead, who says she’s taken a DNA test and whose second cousin is Sarris’ alleged father. “So, if he’s related to me, he doesn’t either.”

Sarris has refused to take a DNA test of his own, saying he’ll only do so if his tribe permits it, and the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs insists that sovereign tribes determine their own membership.

As you might imagine, all of this became a major bone of contention among casino opponents when the Graton Resort & Casino was under development in the 2000s. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. There’s more to the story of Sarris and the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria.

The journey to federal recognition

The first account of the Coast Miwok tribe dates to 1579, when Sir Francis Drake stopped near San Francisco Bay during his famed circumnavigation of the world. The tribe, whose territory included the shores of Tomales Bay near the Point Reyes Peninsula, was hit hard by disease imported by Spanish missionaries and prospectors who swarmed the area during the Gold Rush.

In 1920, the federal government bought 15 acres near the small Sonoma County town of Graton to serve as a permanent location for people of Coast Miwok and Pomo descent who had previously been itinerant. But no one moved onto the land until 1937.

In 1958, Congress passed a statute authorizing the Bureau of Indian Affairs to convey ownership of the land to the individuals living on it. In 1966, the BIA gave the acreage to the only people living on the land, which at the time was just one man, Frank Truvido, and his daughter, Gloria.

Fast forward more than three decades, to 1992, when Sarris was beginning his teaching career as an assistant professor at UCLA. That’s when he learned another tribe that was not Coast Miwok or Pomo was trying to establish a casino at Tomales Bay. Sarris organized a meeting at a senior center near Santa Rosa, where 200 people claiming Coast Miwok descent gathered to discuss how to put a stop to the other tribe’s plans. At the meeting, Sarris was elected chairman.

From that initial meeting, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria was eventually born, a name that had never before appeared in the historical record.

For the next several years, Sarris spearheaded an effort to get the tribe federally recognized. Working with then-California Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, whose district encompassed the tribe’s proposed reservation, Sarris got HR 946 introduced in March 1999 to officially recognize the tribe.

This is where Alaska attorney Mitchell and his book Wampum come into the narrative. Mitchell reports in Wampum that Woolsey didn’t know much about the tribe and wasn’t even particularly knowledgeable about the specifics of her bill – but she was adamant that the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria not open a casino. Her bill federally recognizing the tribe passed out of the House with a no-casino provision.

Then, well, something happened.

As Mitchell wrote, “Two months after the U.S. House of representatives passed Sarris’s bill with the no-casino provision included, Stacey Leavandasky, the member of Lynn Woolsey’s staff who was handling the bill, met with Loretta Tuell, the BIA employee who was handling the bill for [Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs Kevin] Gover, as well as with members of the staff of California senator [sic] Barbara Boxer. After the meeting, Leavandasky reported to Woolsey that ‘the Senate Indian Affairs Committee will not hold hearings on the Miwok bill knowing that BIA opposes the gaming provision.’ She also reported that Tuell had been adamant the [sic] ‘the tribe cannot negotiate away its civil rights and that the role of the federal government/BIA is to be overseer and trustee with all Indians long term benefits in mind.’ ”

A couple of months after that meeting, Mitchell wrote, then-California Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, a good friend of Boxer’s, arranged for the House to suspend its rules and pass the bill again, this time without the no-casino provision, as part of an Indian omnibus bill and without a recorded vote. Mitchell said that Miller did this without looping in Woolsey.

Two months later, the Senate passed the bill and President Bill Clinton signed it into law. Mitchell asked Woolsey what happened. “Greg Sarris sat in my office and he lied to me,” Mitchell quotes her in Wampum.

But with the president’s signature, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria had become a real, federally recognized tribe.

Now it was time for the tribe to pursue its casino.

An ‘awkward’ situation

In April 2003, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria announced it had selected Station Casinos to be its partner in developing a casino on its reservation. Station is best known for the chain of casinos it operates in Las Vegas that cater largely to locals and often have the word “Station” right their names – like Palace Station, Boulder Station and Sunset Station.

Back then, it was unclear if the tribe would be successful in getting its casino off the ground. Indeed, in the years that followed, there’d be substantial efforts to stop the project from moving forward, including a sustained campaign by the Stop the Casino 101 Coalition.

So, in 2003, Sarris couldn’t have known that he would someday become the leader of a powerful, successful gambling operation, which makes what happened next even more interesting.

In December 2003, when Sarris was serving both as tribal chairman and teaching English at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, more than 400 miles from the tribe’s land, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria announced it would be donating $1.5 million to Sonoma State to endow a tenured chair in Native American studies.

Mitchell asked Woolsey what happened. “Greg Sarris sat in my office and he lied to me,” Mitchell quotes her in Wampum.

Since the tribe was still a new entity – and therefore had little in the way of financial resources – Station Casinos advanced the money for the endowment for the tribe.

In a December 13, 2003 story, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Pamela J. Podger wrote that Sonoma state would be forming a hiring committee and “would begin a national search in the spring.”

In the same story, just one paragraph down, Podger also reported that Sarris had “expressed an interest in returning to Sonoma County,” and quoted a Sonoma State official as saying he’d “be delighted to have a scholar of Sarris’ caliber but didn’t know whether he would apply.”

Spoiler alert: Sarris not only applied but got the job, apparently after the university’s “national search.”

In 2007, as opposition mounted against the casino project, Peter Byrne reported in the Bohemian, an alternative newsweekly serving Sonoma and Napa counties, on Sarris’ application to Sonoma State.

According to Byrne, Sarris wrote, “I feel awkward” applying for this job, “because I am the chairman of the tribe that donated the money for the chair. Inability, it seems, mingles with a nagging notion of impropriety.” Then he said, “Still I write thinking that you – my tribe – want me there, want me home.”

With benefits, Sarris made more than $200,000 a year at Sonoma State until he retired in 2021, according to data available on Transparent California.

Of course, by then, the Graton Resort & Casino had been open for more than seven years and was wildly successful as the closest Indian casino to San Francisco. Station Casinos ended its partnership with the tribe in February 2021. The following year the tribe announced plans for a massive, $1-billion expansion that will almost double its gaming floor and make the Graton Resort & Casino the second-largest casino in California.

Moses and Slug Woman

As you might expect, Sarris’ literary output veers heavily toward Native American themes.

His 1993 book, Keeping Slug Woman Alive: A Holistic Approach to American Indian Texts, is a collection of eight essays on cross-cultural communication. Grand Avenue, his 1995 novel that was turned into an HBO miniseries, is set in a Native American community in Northern California. His 1999 novel, Watermelon Nights, tells the saga of a Native American family spanning generations. Coast Miwok and Pomo creation tales inspired his 2017 children’s book, How a Mountain Was Made: Stories. His 2022 memoir is called Becoming Story: A Journey Among Seasons, Places, Trees, and Ancestors and, of course, explores his Native American heritage.

“My journey,” Sarris said in a video-taped April 2022 interview with the Washington Post promoting his memoir, “it’s kind of a bizarre, almost-Moses story, this lost kid comes back and reorganizes his father’s people.”

Many critics, however, say Sarris’ story is more akin to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby’s, a prominent man who boldly lies about his past. “Sarris is no more an Indian than I am a giraffe,” wrote Mitchell, the author of Wampum, in an email to Capitol Weekly.

“My journey….it’s kind of a bizarre, almost-Moses story, this lost kid comes back and reorganizes his father’s people.”

With thinning, black hair, high, hollow cheekbones and a skin tone that’s best described as medium-white, Sarris certainly doesn’t scream Native American when you see him in pictures or videos. But questions about Sarris’ background haven’t stopped the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria from joining other California tribes in political battles, such as the fight over the sports betting initiatives last year.

A source in the tribal gaming community, however, told Capitol Weekly that other tribal leaders wouldn’t want to talk about Sarris. Neither did Republicans or Democrats on the Senate Rules Committee. Sarris declined to talk to Capitol Weekly through a spokeswoman, even after we revealed everything we intended to publish in this story.

In the Student’s Book of College English: Rhetoric, Reader, Research Guide, and Handbook, MLA Update Edition writing textbook that includes essays from such powerhouse writers as George Orwell, Joan Didion and Roger Angell, Sarris published a piece called “You Don’t Look Indian.” It begins: “I have heard that someone said to American Indian writer Louise Erdrich, ‘You don’t look Indian.’ It was at a reading she gave, or perhaps when she received an award of some kind for her writing. Undoubtedly, whoever said this noted Erdrich’s very white skin, her green eyes and her red hair. She retorted, ‘Gee, you don’t look rude.’

“You don’t look Indian.

“How often I too have heard that. But unlike Erdrich, I never returned the insult, or challenged my interlocutors. Not with words anyway. I arranged the facts of my life to fit others’ conceptions of what it is to be Indian. I used others ‘words, others’ definitions. That way, if I didn’t look Indian, I might still be Indian.”

The Senate Rule Committee is expected to take up Sarris’s confirmation sometime next spring.