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Mixed-Blood Utes Sue U.S. Over Elk Sale | 1998

Published: Jan 24, 1998, 12:00 a.m. MST


By Deseret News, Joe Costanzo, Staff Writer


Mixed-blood Utes filed suit against the secretary of the interior and the Ute Indian Tribe last week asserting a right to share in the management of the fish and game on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.

The dispute arises over the Ute Indian Tribe's decision last year to sell live elk to a Colorado ranch and issue commercial big game hunting permits without input from the Ute Distribution Corp., or UDC.The UDC was created in 1958 to represent mixed-blood interests in the management of all assets not susceptible to "equitable and practicable" distribution under the Ute Partition Act.

According to the U.S. District Court lawsuit, those assets include fish and game. The UDC filed a protest with the Bureau of Indian Affairs on Aug. 6, 1996, when it learned that the Ute Indian Tribe planned to gather and sell live elk from reservations lands.

The sale to an unidentified Colorado ranch included 80 bull calves, 160 bred cows, 60 adult bulls and 120 heifer calves.

A copy of the UDC's Aug. 6 letter to BIA Superintendent David Allison was attached to the lawsuit. In it, UDC President Lois LaRose said the tribe's fish and game board decided in 1995 to maintain a large bull elk herd.

"That is the reason why the proclamation was approved concerning bull elk hunting every other year by full-blood and mixed-blood alike," LaRose wrote. "Furthermore, if this proposal is approved, the Ute Tribe would sell live elk to someone off the reservation."

Despite the UDC's objection, the tribe proceeded with the sale without informing the UDC, the suit said. In April 1997, the UDC again protested the sale of elk. The following month, the BIA's superintendent issued an opinion saying the UDC had no joint management role in the disposition of live elk or in the decision to sell commercial permits for big game.

But the UDC appealed, and in July, the BIA's area director in Phoenix stayed the superintendent's ruling, the suit said. Despite that development, the tribe sold more elk and continues to sell commercial hunting permits, the suit said.

The suit asks the federal court to stop the tribe from "gathering, capturing or otherwise rounding-up" fish and game for sale or from selling hunting permits without including the UDC.

Ute tribal officials could not be reached for comment late Friday.

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