Since the election of two tribal dissidents to the Ute Indian Tribe's ruling Business Committee, tribal government has advanced haltingly as political factions squabble and tribal members staged a recall election.
In April elections on the eastern Utah reservation, dissidents Curtis Cespooch and Luke Duncan, whose candidacies arose out of reservation-wide discontent with former leaders, were elected to the tribe's Business Committee.Duncan was later elected Business Committee chairman. He and Cespooch were joined by incumbent Business Committee member Stewart Pike to form a tight coalition on the 6-member ruling council.
Since then, the council has voted to retake the tribe's court system, deeded over to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs by the previously seated Business Committee, and hire a new attorney for the 2,500-member tribe.
But government action on the 4 million-acre reservation ends there. The Business Committee, split between Duncan's bloc and members of the old council, has been unable to meet because it can't reach a quorum of four.
"It's been very, very difficult," Duncan said Thursday, lamenting what he calls the intra-tribal bickering hamstringing tribal affairs.
Business Committee members Irene Cuch, Gary Poowegup and Wilford Conetah avoided meetings last month, leaving the Business Committee without a quorum and effectively halting tribal government.
Now, however, Cuch and Conetah have been removed from office following a June 23 recall election in which members of the bands the two represent voted them out of office. A petition to oust Poowegup was unsuccessful.
Tribal elections to fill the two seats are scheduled for July 12, under an expedited process implemented under the executive authority of Duncan, who wants to quickly install a working government.
"I'd like to see things proceeding in a positive direction rather than wasting our time with this bickering and fighting on the reservation," he said.
"All I want to do is get this darn thing out of the way and get down to business," he added.
Turmoil on the Ute Reservation also has slowed development of a more congenial Indian/non-Indian relationship between governments in the Uintah Basin, officials said.
Last May, Gov. Norm Bangerter traveled to eastern Utah to meet with Ute leaders and non-Indian government officials during a daylong get-acquainted session.
Cooperation was the word of the day. But today, little progress has been made toward building an Indian/non-Indian coalition because of the slowed pace of Ute government, Duchesne County Commissioner Larry Ross said.
"We have tried to communicate with the tribe . . . (but) in their limbo position, I don't believe they want to try and sit down with us yet,' Ross said.
"I believe that once the tribe gets its Business Committee organized, we could look forward to working cooperatively with the tribe," he said, adding that both governments share similar goals. "We think that interests in the basin are the same for Indians and non-Indians."
Chief among those interests in the dry Uintah Basin, now further parched by two major Uintah Mountain forest fires, is water.
Some Business Committee members have pledged to scuttle agreements with the state of Utah sending tens of thousands of gallons of water to Wasatch Front users under the Ute Indian Water Compact and the Central Utah Project.
Although Ross would not say he supported the tribe's opposition to the agreements, he did acknowledge the county's similar disdain for the Central Utah Project.
"We continue to have serious concerns with the Central Utah Project, or the lack of it," he said, explaining the Uintah Basin has enjoyed little in the way of reservoirs and canal proj-ects benefiting other CUP water users.
Duncan called water "the reservation's No. 1 issue."