The Ute Distribution Corporation
The Ute Distribution Corporation and the Ute Partition Act
The Ute Distribution Corporation (UDC), headquartered in Roosevelt, Utah, was issued a corporate charter by the State of Utah on December 9, 1958. Its purpose was to jointly manage, with the Ute Tribe, all assets not subject to division under the Ute Partition and Termination Act of 1954 (P.L. 671), and to distribute revenues from those assets to the 490 Uintah Band members who were terminated by the Act.
Today, UDC claims that the majority of its stockholders remain terminated Uintahs of the Ute Indian Tribe. However, according to the corporation’s own shareholder lists, this is no longer the case. Out of 4,900 outstanding shares, fewer than 500 are currently held by terminated Indians. The overwhelming majority of shares are now in the hands of non-Indians, including trust corporations. As of 2003, the shareholder list included more than 460 names—of which approximately 440 were non-Indian.
The UDC is structured as a Closed Aggregate Corporation, meaning its stock cannot be sold on the open market. Business directories describe its line of business as “lessors of oil and gas wells” and “lessors of real property.” These shares were originally created for the sole benefit of the 490 terminated Uintah Utes, who were promised 27% of the assets of the Ute Reservation under the UPA. They were not intended to be sold or transferred outside of that group.
This raises a critical legal question: if the Ute Partition Act expressly forbade the sale of stock assets prior to 1964, how was it possible that by 1963 nearly 90% of the shares had already passed into non-Indian ownership? The presence of non-Indian individuals and trust entities on the shareholder list suggests that the Act’s provisions were ignored or circumvented.
The result is that the very assets meant to provide long-term stability and compensation to the terminated Uintah Utes have been diverted away from them. If stock transfers occurred before they were legally permitted—or under fraudulent or coercive circumstances—this constitutes a violation not only of the Ute Partition Act, but also of the federal government’s fiduciary duty to protect Indian trust assets.
In this respect, Congress has failed to uphold the very laws it enacted in 1954, creating a situation that calls into question both the administration of the UPA and the protection of Native rights guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States.
This File is the membership list of each (Non-Member) name, addresses and number of UDC shares each owns.
To access the Ute Distribution Corp. Non-Members List CLICK HERE
DISCLAIMER
Can Ute Distribution Corp. Legally Claim to Represent the Terminated Mixed Blood Utes?
Here's the (concurring in part) opinion of Justice William O. Douglas of the Supreme Court of the United States on the Ute Distribution Corp. in the case " Affiliated Ute Citizens v. United States" which was argued Oct. 18, 1971 and decided April 24, 1972.
Congress set forth an explicit procedure for the selection of the 'authorized representives' of the mixed-blood Utes who, with the Tribal Business Committee, were to have managerial powers over the mineral estate in the reservation. Central to this selection was the requirement for 'a majority vote of the adult mixed-blood members of the tribe at a special election authorized and called by the Secertary' of the Interior. 25 U.S.C. §677e. The petitioner Affiliated Ute Citizens was created under this procedure on April 4, 1956. Two *159 years later, the Ute Distribution Corp. was formed and there lies the root of the present litigation.
The Ute Distribution Corp. was not chartered according to the guidelines mandated by Congress. Rather than following the requirement for a majority vote of the mixed-blood members, it was created by the five board members of Affiliated Ute. Approval of its articles of incorporation was by a vote of only 45 to 5- far short of the majority of the 490 mixed-blood Utes required by 25 U.S.C. Ǔ677e. After incorporation, 10 shares of stock were issued to each of the mixed-blood Utes. Despite the flaws in Ute Distribution Corp's formation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs treated it, and not the Affiliated Ute Citizens, as the 'authorized representative.' Payment for mineral rights were thus made to Ute Distribution which, in turn, passed them on to its shareholders as dividends.
Because the Bureau of Indian Affairs viewed the tranfer of mineral interests to Ute Distribution as one to the authorized representative, ef, 25 U.S.C. §677o(a), the restrictions on the tranfer of individual property were removed and the federal trust relationship purportedly was terminated.
Even if the federal trust relationship was terminated as to individual property interests, it does not follow that the trust relationship was also terminated as to the group interest in the mineral rights. The United states continued to owe signigicant obligations and duties with regard to these mineral interests.
Moreover, the only other immunity provision of the Act 25 U.S.C. §677h, applies only where there has been consent by the authorized representatives of the mixed-blood group which was necessarily absent because of the defect in the creation of the Ute Distribution Corp.