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. President Clinton signed the Act into law on December 27, 2000, officially granting the Tribe status as a federally recognized tribe. §1300n (Act) with California Indian Legal Services.
Finally, eight years later, Greg co-authored the Graton Rancheria Restoration Act, 25 U.S.C. 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. He led the push for restoration of the tribe as a federally recognized American Indian nation. Greg immediately notified and consulted with Tribal elders, and soon after called the first meeting to reorganize the Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria.
This tribe was not Coast Miwok or Southern Pomo and was well out of its ancestral territory. 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.
