Graton Rancheria makes $15 million donation to UCLA School of Law

The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, which owns and operates Graton Resort & Casino outside Rohnert Park, on Wednesday announced a $15 million gift to the UCLA School of Law.

A joint statement by the tribe and UCLA described the donation as the largest ever by an American Indian tribe to a law school, and one of the largest ever by a tribe to a university. A UCLA Law representative also said it’s “one of the largest” gifts ever made to the 71-year-old law school in Los Angeles.

The funding will establish an endowment for 15 full-tuition scholarships at UCLA, five in each of the law school’s three class cohorts. Those students will be called Graton Scholars.

“We consider this to be entirely transformative,” said Angela Riley, director of UCLA’s Joint Degree Program in Law and American Indian Studies, as well as the university’s Native Nations Law and Policy Center. “It will enable us to create even more opportunities to recruit the best students who want to be Graton Scholars, and who want to work for or with Native nations.”

Recipients don’t have to be Native American, but must demonstrate an interest in pursuing tribal legal advocacy. The endowment will not create new slots at the law school, but is meant to ease the burden for students already accepted.

Annual tuition at UCLA Law is more than $50,000 for California residents, and more than $56,000 for out-of-state students. And the west side of Los Angeles is an expensive place to live.

“Most students have to be attentive to finances and to financial aid packages,” Riley said. “This hopefully will help us to alleviate that concern and allow qualified students to see the opportunities we offer. So yes, this will absolutely make an enormous difference in the lives of students. Especially if they decide to go into public service afterward, which isn’t always lucrative.”

Greg Sarris, chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, did not respond to numerous requests for comment Wednesday.

Sarris earned an undergraduate degree at UCLA in 1977 and taught Native American Literature and Creative Writing there from 1989 to 2001. The university’s law school has been at the forefront of academic tribal law for decades.

The donation comes three months after the tribe reopened its 200-room hotel and 320,000-square-foot Las Vegas-style casino following a three-month shutdown at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria has made several gifts to Sonoma State University over the years, too, including $2.85 million in the past year to revitalize the Fairfield Osborn Preserve, $1.5 million to establish an endowed chair in Creative Writing and Native American Studies in 2013, a $20,000 endowed student scholarship fund that same year and a total of $700,000 toward SSU’s Summer Bridge program.

Sarris himself is the school’s Graton Rancheria Endowed Chair in Creative Writing and Native American Studies.

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.