Greg Sarris

Gregory Michael Sarris (born February 12, 1959) is a Pomo college professor, writer, producer, screenwriter, and a member and current Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. He was chosen in 2005 to fill the Endowed Chair in Native American Studies at Sonoma State University. The Chair was endowed by his tribe.

He was formerly the Fletcher Jones Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, and a full professor at UCLA for ten years.

Life

Sarris was born in 1952 in Santa Rosa, California. According to Sarris, his birth father was not named on the birth certificate, and he said that his birth mother claimed that the father of her child was a Mexican stable hand where she kept her horse. Sarris states that friends of his birth mother believed Emilio Hilario was his birth father.^[1] After finding the family of Emilio Hilario, Sarris began to claim that Hilario's father, Emiliano Hilario, who was Filipino, told him that his maternal great great grandparents were Tom and Emily Smith. Tom was Kashaya Pomo and Miwok.^[2] Other family members dispute this claim.^[3] Official government records however, indicate that Sarris' maternal great great grandparents were Joseph Peter Stewart, a barber from Pennsylvania and Emily B. (Skanks) Stewart of Maine. Both were African-American. The family has been traced back to 1799. Mary Bernadette "Bunny" Hartman, of Irish and German-Jewish descent, was his mother. He was adopted by a local couple, George and Mary Sarris.^[4]

Sarris attended local schools through Santa Rosa Junior College, and received a B.A. in 1978 from UCLA, where he also played football. He worked in Hollywood as a model and actor before going to graduate school. He earned a Ph.D. in modern thought and literature at Stanford University in 1988, and returned to UCLA to teach in 1989.^[5]

He co-produced an HBO movie, Grand Avenue with Robert Redford in 1996.^[6]

Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria

Sarris serves as Chairman of Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, a federally recognized Indian tribe with offices in Rohnert Park, California.^[7]

Published works

Novels

• Watermelon Nights (1998)

Short story collections

• Grand Avenue (1994)
• The Sound of Rattles and Clappers: a Collection of New California Indian Writing (1994) (as editor and contributor)

Nonfiction

• Keeping Slug Woman Alive: A Holistic Approach to American Indian Texts (1993)
• Mabel McKay: Weaving the Dream (1994)
• Approaches to Teaching the Works of Louise Erdrich (2004)

NAMS165 reader for Sonoma State University

See also

• List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas

Notes

References

• Sarris, Greg. Mabel McKay: Weaving the Dream Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. ISN 0-520-20968-0.

Further reading

• Elvira Pulitano, Toward a Native American Critical Theory. 2005. Sarris is one of six authors whose work is surveyed.