Sarah Harris

Sarah E. Harris is an American and Mohegan attorney and politician who serves as the vice chairwoman of the Mohegan Tribal Council and the secretary of the United South and Eastern Tribes (USET). She previously worked in the Obama administration at the U.S. Department of the Interior, culminating in a 2013 appointment as chief of staff to the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs.

Harris graduated from Dartmouth College in 2000, becoming the first female Mohegan to do so. A descendant of Samson Occom, she led the effort that resulted in the 2022 repatriation of his papers from Dartmouth to the Mohegan Tribe. She was first elected to the Tribal Council in 2017 and has advocated for tribal sovereignty, including testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs regarding the federal government's trust and treaty obligations to tribal nations.

Early life and education Harris attended Griswold High School, where she was vice president of her senior class, a member of the National Honor Society, and participated in volleyball and track. During her final semester, she earned independent research credits by cataloging approximately 11,000 pages of documents related to the Mohegan Tribe's 1994 federal recognition. She later described her time at the college as a "mixed experience", expressing gratitude for her relationships but noting that her ancestor and college founder, Samson Occom, was "barely acknowledged."

Career Harris worked as an attorney in the Washington, D.C. area, representing Native American tribes, tribal entities, and tribal organizations. As of April 2025, she was serving her second four-year term.

In October 2025, Harris testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs about the impact of the United States federal government shutdown. She reported that tribes were using their own revenues to subsidize federal benefits like WIC and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and urged congress to make Indian program funding mandatory, stating, "Our funding is not discretionary, it is a debt prepaid with our lands and resources."

Advocacy Harris is a direct descendant of Sarah, the mother of 18th-century Mohegan minister Samson Occom. In 2020, she joined the Native American Visiting Committee at Dartmouth College, which advises the college president on Native American issues. In this role, Harris led an initiative to repatriate Occom's archival papers from the college to the Mohegan Tribe. The committee pitched the idea to Dartmouth's president, Philip J. Hanlon.

On April 28, 2022, Harris was a featured speaker at the repatriation ceremony where Dartmouth officially returned Occom's papers. At the event, Mohegan Tribal chairman James Gessner Jr. stated that the papers' return was a "direct result of Harris' involvement." In 2024, Harris was invited back to Dartmouth to speak at the inauguration of its new president.

Harris serves as the Secretary of the United South and Eastern Tribes (USET) and the USET Sovereignty Protection Fund. On April 7, 2025, she presented a talk at Quinnipiac University titled "We're All Part of This Story."

Personal life Harris is the daughter of Roland Harris, a former Mohegan Tribal Chairman and former Griswold first selectman. She is a native of Griswold, Connecticut. As of October 2017, Harris lived in Griswold with her 16-month-old twins, a boy and a girl.