Practicing Sovereignty in Greg Sarris's Watermelon Nights

In 1998, when Watermelon Nights was published, the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok people were concluding a decade-long struggle to regain federal recognition. In his fictional account, tribal chairman Greg Sarris depicts both the necessity and the challenge of confronting the tribe’s colonial past in order to address present conflicts. As an intervention into the current discussion on sovereignty, Sarris’s narrative presents sovereignty as a legal concept that is essential but insufficient in itself. Rather than seeing institutional and cultural definitions as mutually exclusive, the novel presents them as mutually enhancing. With a relational and pragmatic understanding of sovereignty, characters develop genealogical charts to meet federal requirements as they struggle to use their history to gain mutual understanding and acceptance.

Only by confronting its colonial past can the tribe effectively practice its sovereignty and gain a more harmonious inclusiveness that heals differences of class, geography, generation, and personal experience.