Native

Before her death in 1993, Mabel McKay — one of the last living dreamers of the Pomo Indian people — shared a prophecy while driving through the Sonoma hills. One day, this paradise would burn.

“Everything is going to go dry. Everything will burn. That’s my latest vision,” she said, gesturing to the idyllic landscape.

Startled, writer Greg Sarris asked what could be done to stop it.

“You live the best way you know how,” McKay replied.

Since her passing, Sonoma County experienced the most destructive wildfires in California history in 2017, only for another, more destructive fire to surpass it a year later. “She always used to say, ‘Whether you believe it or not, it’s true,’” Sarris recalls.

McKay and her visions are the inspiration behind Sarris’ latest work. His first novel in 28 years, “The Last Human Bear,” is loosely based on the spiritual leader McKay, whose wisdom and companionship served as a refuge to Sarris during a tumultuous childhood in Sonoma County.

A reluctant casino mogul

On a Monday morning in California, Sarris sits in his sleek office at the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria in Rohnert Park. Sarris, 74, has served as chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria for more than 30 years. In his office, diplomas and academic certificates crowd the walls. A framed poster for the 2023 film “Joan Baez: I Am a Noise” hangs nearby — she’s a close friend. Behind him, an American flag ripples in the distance outside the window, blurred by the summer heat.

Just up the road sits a multibillion-dollar tribe-owned casino, Graton Resort & Casino — a project the writer oversees. “I had never been in a casino. I have a PhD in modern thought and literature from Stanford,” says Sarris.

How does an accomplished author find himself at the helm of a multibillion-dollar casino enterprise? It’s a question that still puzzles Sarris. “I told them if we can raise our people and become a platform for social justice and environmental stewardship to benefit Indian and non-Indian alike, I’ll do it.”

Before his stint as a reluctant casino mogul, Sarris was a prolific author and university professor at UCLA and Sonoma State. In 2023, he was appointed a regent of the University of California by Gavin Newsom. Over the course of his career, he published six books, and his novel “Grand Avenue” became an HBO original film in 1996.

California’s Native history: revisited

From early in his career, Sarris wanted to depict Indians as he knew them, rather than as Hollywood depicted them. “We’ve been erased by Hollywood, because the idea of Indians has always been Plains Indians or Southwest,” Sarris explains. “It’s easier for Americans to access Buffalo Bill.”

Greg Sarris’ new novel “The Last Human Bear.”

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

“California Indians have always been left out of the picture,” says Sarris.

“The Last Human Bear” is Sarris’ latest attempt to revive the legacy of California’s Native history. The novel follows Mary Hatcher, a Pomo Indian in Sonoma County, from Prohibition through the 21st century. It’s told in the first person through Hatcher’s compelling voice as she narrates the horror and heartbreak of her lifetime over the course of a century, echoing William Faulkner’s literary style, which influenced Sarris.

“I’m curious why you want to know about me,” reads the first line. The novel unfolds like an oral storytelling tradition, driven by a voice that Sarris painstakingly crafted, evoking his conversation with McKay. “The voice comes. I have to call it, almost like a spirit,” says Sarris. “I wanted it to feel like an oral story.”

Hatcher — a Pomo shape-shifter who dodges prejudice by passing as Mexican in the novel — is a thorny protagonist, often cunning, scheming and unforgiving. “An American Indian woman is as richly complicated as anybody else. I wanted to show this rich and complicated character who’s negotiated a history that she’s showing you,” says Sarris.

Acclaimed Northern California writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, who has authored 17 books and is a friend of Sarris’, says that she was fascinated by his ability to evoke so many aspects of female life in “The Last Human Bear.” Solnit was especially moved by Sarris’ rendering of California’s tragic history. “It’s shocking, given how rich California’s Indigenous cultures were — 99 different language groups, mythologies, belief systems and linguistic traditions. Every North American Indigenous language family is represented in California. It’s weird how this history has been erased, and how horrific what happened was.”

Climate change and ongoing ecological disasters have made Indigenous perspectives more vital than ever, the author argues. “I think Indigenous people have been hugely influential in giving us a point of view in which we were never separate from nature,” she says. According to Solnit, Sarris’ novels are part of a broader resurgence of interest in Native culture.

In the early chapters of the “The Last Human Bear,” the protagonist gets a job on a ranch by posing as Mexican, since Indians were forbidden from working as housekeepers. What follows is a tale of tension, deception and a forbidden love that sours, reminiscent of Brontë novels.

Sarris hopes that the novel illuminates an uncomfortable history of Sonoma County that remains largely invisible, looming beneath the soil of wine country. The novel offers “a history of this county that a lot of people haven’t seen,” says Sarris.

“There were more Indian people right where we’re sitting per capita than anywhere else in the entire New World outside Mexico City, which was the Aztec capital,” says Sarris. “The genocide was so horrendous.”

Identity, revenge and a search for home are themes that arise throughout the novel — subjects Sarris knows well in his own life.

Greg Sarris feeds chickens at an organic farm across the street from Graton Resort & Casino, which he heads, in Rhonert Park.

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

Uncovering a hidden Native heritage

In 1952, Sarris’ teenage mother gave him up for adoption, her family hoping to evade the embarrassment of their Jewish daughter becoming pregnant by a Native American Filipino man. Sarris grew up in a white family in Santa Rosa alongside three siblings. His adopted father, George Sarris, became abusive, causing Greg to flee the house with his adopted mother’s blessing. “God bless her. She let me go out and live on ranches and run with other people to get away from him.”

It was in these formative years that Greg became acquainted with Native American people in Santa Rosa, always feeling a mysterious pull toward them. It was these years that also shaped his sensibility as a writer. “I was a lost kid on the streets, so I was always paying attention to everyone, listening, and people would tell me stories.”

Native Americans lived on the fringe of town, often practicing healing ceremonies that were frowned upon by white Catholic families in the suburbs Sarris explains. “When I was 15, I met Mabel McKay, who I wrote the book about. I knew she did some of those strange things that I heard about, but I liked her,” he says. “I had no idea that I was related to these people. I thought I was a mixed-blood Mexican or Spanish.”

At age 30, Sarris uncovered the identities of his birth parents and learned of his Native heritage. He learned his birth mother was buried in a pauper’s grave at the Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Santa Rosa, with “nothing to mark her grave but an upside-down horseshoe that has her name in it.” In the opening pages of the novel, a dedication to her: Bunny Hartman.

Excitedly, Sarris presented proof of his Indian heritage to McKay, his trusted confidant. “I thought it was a big deal that I had Indian blood,” says Sarris. He showed McKay a photo of his father, which she met with indifference. Naturally, Sarris was disappointed. “She told me something later: ‘You’re never any more Indian than your experience.’”

A lifelong outsider

Questions surrounding the legitimacy of Sarris’ heritage haunted him for decades and ultimately informed the novel. Being adopted by a white family, only to be shunned by the Native community, perpetuated his lifelong feeling of being an outsider. “I keep thinking maybe I just got in with this group of people and my Indian relatives so that I would feel rejected again,” he says. “We gravitate towards what we know as home emotionally.”

“I didn’t grow up on a reservation. I’m fair-skinned,” he says. “Being adopted, it feeds into that feeling of not being good enough,” he says, adding: “Illegitimacy is a medicine in the end.”

In the Native American literary community, Sarris has often felt excluded from discourse. When in doubt, he reminds himself of his involvement with the tribe. “Who among them have done this much for their people?” he asks. “Who among them has given this much time and sacrificed a writing career for their people?”

Jane Fonda, the two-time Academy Award-winning actress and activist, struck up a friendship with Sarris through a shared cause. “We met during the campaign to secure health and safety setbacks that would finally prevent oil wells from being drilled within 3,200 feet of a community. Greg and the federated tribes helped us win that fight against Big Oil,” Fonda explained in an email.

“I can tell from his books and my time with him that he embodies indigenous wisdom and beliefs,” Fonda says. “I see Greg Sarris as a man who embodies the best of two worlds — the mercantile culture of Western civilization and the indigenous world that knows we are part of nature and interdependent with it. It’s a rare and valuable combination.”

Greg Sarris, who holds a PhD in literature from Stanford, inside the casino he works for to help fund his tribe’s future.

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

Inside the polarizing casino kingdom

The Graton Resort & Casino, launched by Sarris over 12 years ago, now plays a vital role in supporting the Pomo Indian community. “I promised early on: roof over everyone’s head, an insurance policy in every pocket and a college degree paid for,” he says. “We give $2.5 million a year in perpetuity to the University of California, so that all California Indians can go to the University of California tuition-free.” The casino has funded theater programs, youth writing intensives and revenue sharing with neighboring tribes.

On the car ride to the casino, Sarris is riffing on his friendship with Grateful Dead member Mickey Hart, who bought Sarris a quarter horse as a gift. In the casino, Sarris eagerly greets his employees with a friendliness that betrays his repeated insistence that he’s a reclusive writer. He points out blown-glass flower sculptures, an embellishment he once saw at the Four Seasons in Paris. He walks past the baccarat room, where he hosts high rollers from Beijing, whom he boasts, “play $100,000 in a hand.”

Early on, news of the casino’s construction caused waves of controversy across Sonoma County — some of which resulted in death threats against Sarris’ life. Concerns that a casino would invite debauchery into the county circulated, which Sarris points out is ironic for a community predicated on wine: “Beyond whether gambling is right or wrong, what is implicit is their privilege and elitism,” says Sarris. “People were getting scared because these brown people, who were the poorest in Sonoma County, are suddenly going to have power.”

Admittedly, Sarris says their newfound wealth has not been without repercussions in the tribe. “People who have been traumatized with generational poverty are the most vulnerable to the lure of materialism,” he says.

When time catches up

In the final chapters of “The Human Bear,” the protagonist, at the end of her life, recalls: “Human Bears often like to even the score before they die.” Revenge is futile, she concludes. “If I was going to avenge our people, I would have to poison nearabout all of history.”

Sarris recalls a similar epiphany he had speaking with McKay. He explains Pomo Indians believed that each action had a consequence. “Ethnographers always said we’re a culture predicated on black magic and fear. No, we were cultures predicated on profound respect for the complexity of all life,” says Sarris.

Then, white men came and seemingly bent the laws of natural order. “The Kashaya Pomo word for white people was ‘miracles’, because they came in and killed everything and did all these things. Nothing could come back to them,” says Sarris.

He explained to McKay that he thought of the white man’s fate differently. “Look, there’s no water. There’s no air. Everything’s poison,” he says, gesturing around him to this vast, broken world. “It’s all come back. It just took time.”

Connors is a culture journalist from Sonoma County. She covers books, food, entertainment and offbeat Los Angeles. She’s currently at work on a book of essays about tourism in all its forms.

Oliver Tree, a genre-defying singer-songwriter and Santa Cruz native, was one of six people killed when two helicopters collided Sunday morning in Brazil, according to the Associated Press. He was 32.

Tree, a quirky artist known for his highly theatrical music videos and crisp bowl cut, had been traveling through South America as a part of his world tour. CNN Brazil reported Argentinian YouTuber Gaspar Prim, also known as Gaspi, was among those killed in the crash.

The mid-air collision occurred in Rio de Janeiro, with one of the helicopters landing in the parking lot of a car dealership, the AP reports. Local authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of the crash.

Tree, born Oliver Tree Nickell, broke out in the electronic music world first performing as, simply, Tree. He released an e.p., “Demons,” in 2013, which included a cover of Radiohead’s “Karma Police.” He later attended CalArts north of Los Angeles, and signed to Atlantic Records for his major-label debut e.p. “Alien Boy” in 2018.

To find his distinct look, he told the Santa Cruz Sentinel that “I was making a statement with it. Everybody’s trying to look so beautiful and sexy nowadays. It was my way of rebelling against that. So, I tried to make myself look as silly and ridiculous as possible.”

Tree was an instant hit on the festival circuit for his outlandish stage productions and outsider charisma, performing at Lollapalooza, Coachella and Outside Lands. He collaborated with Skrillex, David Guetta and Zeds Dead, and was fiercely protective of his meticulously weird visual identity and video concepts, telling Rolling Stone that “That’s kind of my signature. The people who do f- with me know me because of my videos..Music is my day job but my real dream is to be making feature films.

He released his major label debut LP, “Ugly Is Beautiful,” in 2020. His hit song “Life Goes On” and collaboration “Miss You” with German DJ Robin Schulz earned him international recognition and climbed onto the Billboard Hot 100. He released four full length albums as Oliver Tree, most recently April’s independent LP “Love You Madly Hate You Badly.”

Tree had performed in Buenos Aires on June 4.

From July to October, he had shows scheduled throughout Europe, Australia and China. This year, he performed at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival this year as a special guest of electronic producer Subtronics. In one of his last social media posts, he made a point to spotlight an upcoming show on Aug. 9 in his hometown at the Quarry Amphitheater at UC Santa Cruz.

“I can’t believe Oliver is gone,” Schulz posted on Instagram. “You were such a lovely soul and a one of a kind character. Working with you on ‘Miss You’ was an honor. My deepest condolences to his family, friends and everyone who loved him.”

Wade Meckler had quite the homecoming.

The Yorba Linda native dominated in his Angels debut, hitting a first-pitch, three-run homer off Jacob deGrom in his first at-bat and making a sensational catch in foul territory, all in the first inning, to help his hometown team beat the Rangers 9-6 on Friday night at Angel Stadium.

Meckler attended Esperanza High in Anaheim and grew up an Angels fan. After he was called up from Double-A Rocket City on Friday, Meckler finished with two hits in what was the Angels’ highest-scoring game since April 26, when they scored nine in extras against the Royals.

“Yeah, it was pretty cool,” Meckler said. “Just trying to make a play on defense. But getting your first homer up, it’s pretty hard to top that.”

In sending the 97-mph four-seam fastball from deGrom (3-4), a two-time Cy Young Award winner, 403 feet to right center, Meckler became the first Angels player to homer in his first at-bat with the team since Mike Napoli did against the Tigers in 2006.

Meckler was also the first player to hit a homer in their Angels debut since Randal Grichuk did in 2023 against the Braves.

“We know he plays the game hard,” Angels manager Kurt Suzuki said. “We’ve seen him play the game the way he does in spring training. 
So I think [Meckler’s] just a naturalist, good baseball player.”

Meckler hit .315 over 111 at-bats with the Angels in spring training, after being claimed off waivers by the franchise in January.

The 26-year-old shared pregame that he grew up rooting for classic Angels names such as Chone Figgins, Torii Hunter and Erick Aybar during the mid-to-late 2000s.

But there was another Angels player Meckler watched growing up: his new teammate, Mike Trout.

“It’s pretty surreal,” Meckler said. “You grew up watching a guy every day on TV for 10 years, and then all of a sudden, he’s a teammate. It’s pretty cool.”

Originally the Giants’ choice with the 256th pick in the 2022 MLB Draft, Meckler has struggled to find his footing in the majors. However, his night couldn’t have gone much better.

Suzuki and the middling Angels, at least, would probably like Meckler to stay hot forever. After all, he earned a shot with the big-league club after hitting .343 with 34 hits and 13 RBI through 27 games with Rocket City.

“It feels good,” Meckler said. “It’s been a little bit. Spent a lot of the last couple years injured, grinding through injuries, and it feels good to be healthy and able to compete. I feel like I’m capable of competing. And obviously, it’s really cool to be in the big leagues for your childhood team as well.”

Despite entering on a three-game skid, the Angels came to play to open a three-game series against the Rangers.

Shortstop Zack Neto hit a pair of solo shots: one in the first and another in the eighth. The four-year MLB veteran is up to 12 career lead-off homers and has three in 2026.

“It was a lot of fun,” Neto said. “From one through nine, even the guys on the bench, coming in and doing their job … We had the big hit when we needed it.”

Right-handed starter Grayson Rodriguez also earned his first win of the year after tossing 5 2/3 innings of four-run ball.

In the seventh, Neto preserved the Angels’ 6-5 lead after throwing out Josh Jung at home. Neto caught a strong throw to the infield from Jo Adell after a Brandon Nimmo RBI double.

“I mean, defense wins games,” Neto said.

Angels catcher Logan O’Hoppe was banged up during Jung’s play at the plate. However, he shut down any concerns after the win.

“I’ll be at the doc one more time, but I’m fine, O’Hoppe said. “It’s the same feeling that all the headshots feel like. You feel out of it and a little slow, but usually a good night’s sleep takes care of it.”

After Angel Stadium stretched, second baseman Oswald Peraza hit his sixth homer of the year, a solo shot against lefty Jalen Beeks.

Neto hit his second homer of the night in the eighth against righty Chris Martin, and first baseman Nolan Schanuel capped the Angels’ scoring with an RBI single nine pitches later.

“I felt throughout, guys were getting good at-bats,” Suzuki said. “We were getting guys on; there was a couple times we didn’t get them in, but we’re constantly getting guys in position to score.”

The Angels still hold an MLB-worst 18-34 record, but beat the AL West’s second-placed team before an announced crowd of 34,288. Fans in the right-field pavilions continued to chant “sell the team.”

Brian Kahn was a teenager living in the San Fernando Valley in the 1970s, which meant at 5:30 p.m. every weekday he did what any true sports fan did at that time.

He listened to the radio.

“Is it true? … I am the king … Aw, blow it out! … The dreaded 6 o’clock tone …”

“I had a buddy and his dad used to listen to Jim Healy a lot,” Kahn recalled, “and I caught onto it and loved it and just religiously listened to it every day. He’d talk about horse racing all the time and I knew nothing about it.

“It caught my interest somehow.”

Little did 15-year-old Brian Kahn know that enjoying odd sound effects and rants from Tommy Lasorda and Lee Elia would someday lead him to breeding one of the 20 horses that will start in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs (3:57 p.m. PDT, NBC). The Puma, who is 10-1 on the morning line, is a son of Eve of War, a mare Kahn owns with Hidden Brook Farm in Paris, Ky.

After hearing Healy talk about the horses, Kahn began watching the race replays each night on TV. His cousin started taking him to Santa Anita, where he saw Spectacular Bid win the 1980 Strub Stakes in world record time for 1¼ miles and later followed such stars as John Henry.

“It was just so dynamic back then, being at Santa Anita for the big days and there would be 60,000 or 70,000 people there,” he said. “It was amazing.”

Brian Kahn stands alongside a 2026 foal, the daugher of Maximus Mischief, at Hidden Brook Farm in Paris, Ky.

(Courtesy of Brian Kahn)

Kahn, 61, went to Birmingham High School and USC, and decided he wanted to have a career in horse racing. He worked as a hot walker for some trainers, including Gary Jones, read everything about the sport and business he could and learned that unless he wanted to get up at 4 a.m. and be a trainer, he needed to move to Kentucky.

Duncan Taylor from Taylor Made Farm offered him a job, and Kahn got in his car and drove more than 2,100 miles to Nicholasville, Ky., just outside Lexington.

He started working with horses but eventually Taylor thought Kahn was more suited to client relations, or “hustling business” for the farm by convincing owners to board their mares at Taylor Made or sell them.

It was a good beginning, but after three years, Kahn missed California.

“I really should have stayed in Lexington and made a life there for myself, but I ended up coming back,” he said. “But I was able to do business for them from out here.”

Kahn, who lives by the beach in Venice, enjoyed his first major success with Miatuschka, a mare he bought with Taylor Made in the mid-1990s and later sold for $380,000, making “a nice profit.”

“I’ve been doing that ever since,” Kahn said.

Brian Kahn, left; Bryan Cross, center; and Dan Hall are his partners owning Eve at War, the mother of The Puma. They gathered at Hidden Brook Farm in Paris, Ky.

Not every sale works out like that, but Kahn has done well enough to make this his career. He looks to buy fillies and mares that are good broodmare prospects, then either resells them or breeds them and sells the foal.

For the colt that turned out to be The Puma, Kahn thought Eve of War — a daughter of Declaration of War, who was a multiple Grade 1-winner in Europe — had great promise after winning a maiden race. Her career never really took off like he thought, but Kahn believed she would be a good broodmare. When she was consigned to a sale in the summer of 2021, he bought her with Hidden Brook for $135,000.

Kahn’s idea was to breed her to Charlatan, who won the Arkansas Derby and Malibu Stakes for Bob Baffert in 2020. But Sergio de Sousa, managing partner at Hidden Brook, suggested Essential Quality, a champion colt at 2 and 3 at the start of this decade.

As a yearling, the colt didn’t meet his reserve price of $95,000, so Kahn and Hidden Brook pointed him to a 2-year-old in training sale last year at Ocala. He brought a price of $150,000, still less than Kahn hoped. But they still own Eve of War, whose value has increased with the progress of The Puma, and she has a yearling colt by Nyquist, a weanling colt by Practical Joke and this year was bred to Sierra Leone.

Under the care of trainer Gustavo Delgado, who won the Derby two years ago with Mage, The Puma has won only once in four starts, but that victory came in the Tampa Bay Derby. He also was second in the Florida Derby, losing to Commandment by a nose.

And now he’s in the Kentucky Derby. Kahn, who spends three to four months a year in Lexington, was there last week but will be home Saturday, watching by himself.

“To have a Derby horse … it’s very significant for me and very exciting,” he said. “Off the charts exciting.”

Silent Tactic scratched

Silent Tactic, second in the Rebel and Arkansas Derby, has been scratched from the Derby with a bruised foot. That moves Great White from the also-eligible list into the field of 20, breaking from the outside post position. Horses who were drawn from 14-20 will move inside by one spot.

Great White, a son of Violence, won the John Battaglia Memorial Stakes in February over the synthetic surface at Turfway Park, but in his first (and only) career start on dirt, he was a distant fifth in the Blue Grass at Keeneland.