Tribe claims lease payments diverted to U.S. treasury
The Ute Indian Tribe has filed three lawsuits against the United States, seeking compensation for alleged promises and mismanagement of tribal lands on the East Tavaputs Plateau.
Two additional lawsuits allege mismanagement of the Tribe’s water rights.
In essence, the Ute Tribe wants to be reimbursed for millions of dollars it claims has been misdirected to the federal government. The money, the lawsuit claims, involves mineral lease payments paid to the federal government that should have gone to the tribe.
The lawsuit, filed March 6, claims the federal government made promises to the tribe when it was evicted from its original reservation. The issue, according to the lawsuit, is that the Uncompahgre and White River bands of the Ute Tribe were relocated from fertile land in Colorado and eastern Utah to much less desirable land further west in Utah. This move was done when it was found the land in the East Tavaputs Plateau was rich in minerals.
The lawsuit is now seeking compensation for more than a century of mining and drilling on lands that were promised to the tribe. The lawsuit claims the land should have been managed for the benefit of the tribe. Rather, hundreds of millions of dollars were misdirected, in what amounts to “theft.” The tribe wants the money.
The lawsuit states, “These claims stem from the United States’ violation of the Acts of Congress that created federal trust ownership for the benefit of the Ute Tribe of the lands on the Uncompahgre Reservation.”
According to a Ute Tribe press release dated March 9, the Tribe has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims requesting monetary relief to compensate for what the Tribe calls “past harms” as well as a second lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for, “equitable relief to hold the United States accountable to the Tribe now and into the future.”
The news release states that the “Tribe’s claims against the United States focus, in large part, on the Uintah Indian Irrigation Project, a Congressionally-authorized Indian irrigation project designed to irrigate nearly 88,000 acres of Reservation land.” The Tribe alleges breaches of the United States’ fiduciary obligations to the Tribe.