Becoming Story: A Journey among Seasons, Places, Trees, and Ancestors

The complex layering of memory and nostalgia intermingle with Indigenous identity and knowledge in Greg Sarris’ Becoming Story: A Journey among Seasons, Places, Trees, and Ancestors. As a tribal leader of the Coast Miwok and Pomo peoples in what is known as Santa Rosa, California, Sarris shares profound realizations about the nature of change in this moving memoir. Seasons mark the continuous confluence of places, people, plants, birds, and others, coming and going in Sarris’ lifetime. Every memory is a story that yields legends anew, strengthening existing bonds.

Becoming is a process, identity is complex, and all hard-fought journeys require time. In Becoming Story, stories are anchored in places transformed by people who are themselves transformed by time. As the head of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Sarris has a nuanced perspective on Indigenous lifeways that emphasize interdependence. Centuries of colonization through the Spanish Catholic missions in California both destroyed and created a unique culture inhabited by descendants who share both generational pride and wounds.

Sarris’ Northern California landscapes are sacred texts, peopled with elk, pronghorn, osprey, and lizards. Traversing different lives, Becoming Story is a heartfelt contemplation of one man’s decades-long journey of returning home.