Mixed-blood Uintas seek Native American status
Published: July 3, 2005, 12:00 a.m. MDT
By Deseret News, Lezlee E. Whiting For the Deseret Morning News
ROOSEVELT — It's been three years since a federal court judge took a case under advisement that could change the course of life for some 650 descendants of the Uinta Band of Ute Indians.
Actually, the mixed-blood Uintas — or "terminated Utes," as they are also called — have been wondering about their future for more than 50 years now. They want the judge to answer if a law passed by Congress 51 years ago, which stripped 27 percent of Ute Tribe members of their status as Native Americans based on their blood quantum, is legal.
The judge's ruling could determine if they will be reinstated as members of the Northern Ute Indian Tribe.
In 1954, the Ute Partition Act severed the membership in the Ute Indian Tribe for 490 mixed-blood Uinta Utes. More than half of them were children. A case filed in federal court in November 2002 seeks to cancel that termination. The U.S. government filed in 2003 to dismiss the claims of the terminated Utes.
"We have heard absolutely nothing. Our people are dying off. We were terminated in 1954; the babies in our case are in their early 50s now," said Roosevelt resident Oranna Felter, the lead plaintiff in Felter, et al. vs. Norton, et al. "We are all old. We want to get something done."
The mixed-blood Uintas were holding a meeting Saturday at the Utah State University Uintah Basin campus in Roosevelt to be updated on the latest details in their case by their California attorney, Dennis G. Chappabitty.
"There's been activity in our case and he wants to let the people know what's going on," said Felter.
The latest development was notifying the federal judge over the case that the 90-day period to rule on the government's motion to dismiss the Uinta band's case has long passed. The government's motion to dismiss was filed in November 2003.
"No one can go down into the judge's chambers and pound on his desk and demand that he render his decision right now, that's just not the way it works," Chappabitty said. "The notice that has been filed is proof that we are doing our best to remind Judge (Richard W.) Roberts that we believe his decision is long overdue."
According to Chappabitty, there is no proof in the historical record that the mixed-blood Uintas ever voluntarily agreed to their termination at a legally conducted meeting held under the Ute Tribe's Constitution.
"Officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs told Congress that the mixed-blood has knowing and voluntarily voted to end their status as federally recognized Indians," he said.
In the process of termination, the government gave each of the mixed-blood Uintas money, property and 10 shares of stock in Ute Distribution Corporation, which was formed to manage indivisible assets such as oil, gas and mineral rights. At the same time they lost much more than they gained: their identity as members of the Ute Tribe, medical benefits they had come to depend on, and friends.
Many of the mixed-blood Uintas quickly found themselves even without the financial support they were given upon termination because they didn't understand how to manage their assets and money. In numerous cases, they were duped out of their cash and land holdings by non-Indians eager to take advantage of their lack of financial acumen, said Felter.
The lawsuit filed by Chappabitty on behalf of the terminated Utes charges that the U.S. government, acting through the BIA, incorrectly implemented the Ute Partition Act.
The complaint also charges that the federal government "grossly mismanaged and continues to grossly mismanage their interest in monies derived from the disposition of settlement funds earmarked and targeted for distribution to them arising from a $32 million Indian Claims Commission judgment."
The 650 plaintiffs in the case are seeking an accounting of these funds, said Chappabitty.
"They are charging the defendants with losing those funds and, thus, denying them and their children of the benefit of these judgment monies," he said.
The plaintiffs whose names are listed in the lawsuit include the original 490 terminated Utes and their family members, who come from throughout Utah, Oklahoma, Idaho, Nevada and California.
Felter was an 11-year-old living in Fort Duchesne, Uintah County, when her parents signed termination papers on her behalf. It was a stroke of the pen that would change her life and the life of her family forever, she said.
"All my friends were 'full-bloods.' We ran around together, went to school together, ate together, played together. Then all of a sudden everybody stopped running around with all of us 'mixed bloods.' I had to change my whole life and it's never stopped."
Felter has personally been helping lead the fight for reinstatement for 32 years. It's a fight that has cost plaintiffs "tens and thousands of dollars," all raised through individual donations.
In the history of U.S. Indian policies, the mixed-blood Uinta Utes are the only group within a tribe to be targeted for termination. Typically, it was an entire tribe that was terminated. All tribes that were terminated have since been reinstated, leaving the mixed-blood Uinta Utes as the only terminated people who have not yet regained their status as Native Americans.
"Termination is really a mixed-up mess. That's probably why we were the first and last ones ever done," said Felter.