Tribal Work by Greg Sarris

Restoring the Tribe

While Greg was working toward his PhD at Stanford in the late 1980’s, he discovered that his biological father was descended from the Coast Miwok and Pomo tribes of Marin and Sonoma Counties. Sadly, the Coast Miwok and the Southern Pomo tribes had lost their status as a recognized tribe that had been called the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (the Tribe) in 1958. However, Greg was able to establish contact with members of those tribes, many of whom were located in his own childhood home – Sonoma County. Greg delved into the task of finding many survivors and descendants of the Coast Miwok and the Southern Pomo tribes, some of whom were his blood cousins through his biological father.

In 1992, when Greg Sarris was beginning his teaching career at UCLA as an assistant professor, he got word of another tribe attempting to establish a casino at Tomales Bay. This tribe was not Coast Miwok or Southern Pomo and was well out of its ancestral territory. Greg immediately notified and consulted with Tribal elders, and soon after called the first meeting to reorganize the Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria. He led the push for restoration of the tribe as a federally recognized American Indian nation. It took years of gathering records, family histories and interviews of all who were descended from the original Tribal members, in order for this evidence to be submitted to the United States Department of the Interior. Finally, eight years later, Greg co-authored the Graton Rancheria Restoration Act, 25 U.S.C. §1300n (Act) with California Indian Legal Services. President Clinton signed the Act into law on December 27, 2000, officially granting the Tribe status as a federally recognized tribe. The Act mandated that the Secretary of the Interior take land in the Tribe’s aboriginal territory of Marin or Sonoma Counties into trust as the Tribe’s reservation. This was only the beginning…

Greg is currently the Tribal Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. He is in his fifteenth consecutive elected term as Chairman of the Tribe and is currently leading the Tribe in its economic development endeavors with Station Casinos. Tribal Chairman Greg Sarris oversees all business negotiations and the daily operations of the Tribe. Greg spearheaded the effort to build a casino, the Graton Resort and Casino, which opened November 2013. A large portion of the profits from the casino will be given back to the community where it is located, Sonoma County and the City of Rohnert Park, for the preservation of public parks and open spaces, and for the establishment of low-cost organic farming for low income members of the community. Read Greg Sarris’ biography and discover more about Greg and his remarkable background.