Joan Baez

Greg Sarris (My Kind of Chief) , 2020

 
34 x 22 in

Greg Sarris, chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria in Sonoma County, was so moved by Joan’s first collection of Mischief Makers portraits that he made sure all 14 will remain together as the centerpiece of a new civil rights and social justice learning center.

In 2017, Sarris, an author and college professor, spearheaded an effort by the tribe, which owns and operates the Graton Resort and Casino in Rohnert Park, to buy the collection and donate it to Sonoma State University for a future campus center devoted to civil rights and social justice. Until then, the paintings, including portraits of Martin Luther King Jr., the late Georgia Congressman John Lewis and United Farmworkers co-founder Delores Huerta, are on exhibit in the university’s Green Music Center.

"I can’t think of a better place for these paintings to be archived all in one place forever,” he says.

Since 2005, Sarris, who earned his doctorate in modern thought and literature from Stanford University, has held the Graton Rancheria Endowed Chair in Writing and Native American Studies at Sonoma State. He has written numerous books, notably 1994’s “Grand Avenue,” a collection of short stories about the Native American community that was adapted for an HBO miniseries co-executive produced by Robert Redford. In the Los Angeles Times, reviewer Robert Dorris praised it as “one of the most important imaginative books of the year.”

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