UTE INDIAN TRIBE OF THE UINTAH AND OURAY RESERVATION

Ute Indians were originally composed of many distinct groups that once occupied nearly half of present-day Utah, with each band maintaining its own identity. In 1934, United States Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and the Utes of the Uintah, White River and Uncompaghre bands reorganized to form the current Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.

On August 27, 1954, the United States Congress showed is prejudice against Native people by again reorganizing Ute Indians when it passed the Ute Partition and Termination Act. The Ute Partition and Termination Act created an artificial distinction between Utes of “mixed-blood” and those of “full-blood”. Pursuant to the Ute Partition and Termination Act, Ute Indians would consist afterward “exclusively of full-blood members. Mixed-blood members shall have no interest therein except as otherwise provided in this Act.” 490 Utes of “mixed-blood” retained only limited hunting and fishing rights which they could not pass down to their descendants.

Today, the Ute Indian Tribe comprises more than 3,000 members, more than half of whom live on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation. The Ute Business Committee governs the tribe, and oversees roughly 1.3 million acres of trust land. The Uintah and Ouray Reservation contains significant deposits of oil and gas. The Ute Business Committee continues to engage in legal battles with local counties, and with the State of Utah, to protect Ute Indian jurisdiction over lands set aside by the United States federal government and reserved for the benefit of the Ute Indian Tribe.

Biden Proclaimation on Bears Ears National Monument

Submitted by sundance on October 8, 2021 - 11:00pm

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For more than 100 years, indigenous people, historians, conservationists, scientists and others advocated unsuccessfully for protection of Bears Ears. It was not until the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and Pueblo of Zuni united in a common vision to protect these sacred lands that Bears Ears National Monument became a reality. This proclamation confirms, restores, and supplements the boundaries provided by Proclamation 9558 to protect the ancestral homeland of Tribal Nations that all refer to the area by the same name — Hoon’Naqvut (Hopi), Shash Jaa’ (Navajo), Kwiyagatu Nukavachi (Ute), and Ansh An Lashokdiwe (Zuni): Bears Ears.

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