The mood was one of relief, reserve and a renewed commitment for cooperation among the Ute Tribe and local governments following Thursday's long anticipated 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in the tribe's 22-year old jurisdiction case.
In a 48-page decision, the Denver-based Appeals Court found that the original boundaries of the Uintah Valley Reservation had not been dis-established in a February 1991 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Hagen case.At the same time, the three-member panel of judges, which heard the case last September, said that in accordance with Hagen, lands that were opened to homesteading through 1902 and 1905 congressional acts and were not later restored to the tribe are not included in those reservation boundaries.
The ruling creates a doughnut-hole effect in which homesteaded tracts such as Roosevelt City and the surrounding area, as well as portions of Myton, Duchesne and Altamont, were excised from the reservation.
Within the identified homestead lands, state, county and local governments will have criminal and civil jurisdiction over tribal members. In all other areas such as trust lands, allotted lands and partitioned lands, the Ute Tribe can claim civil and criminal jurisdiction over its people.
Ute tribal attorney Robert Thompson said the tribe is "cautiously pleased" with the ruling. According to Thompson, the tribe's jurisdictional authority really won't change the status quo on the reservation, even though it now extends to lands which have been sold years ago to non-Indians.
"To my knowledge, the tribe has never attempted to regulate non-Indian conduct off of trust lands," Thompson said. Trust lands are undisputed lands held in trust for the tribe by the federal government.
Tribal leaders who commented on the ruling say it just gives them civil and criminal jurisdiction over their own tribal members within the areas now defined as "Indian Country."
"Our jurisdiction is over our own members and those from federally recognized tribes," said Ute Tribe Business Committee member Larry Blackhair. "And we're only talking about 2,500 to 3,000 people. To me, it wasn't asking a lot, it was just asking that we have jurisdiction over our own people."
Blackhair says tribal leaders are committed to extending their hand "more than we have in the past in saying to the state and the counties, `Let's sit down and work on this.' " There will always be wording in the decision that can be appealed, he noted, but the tribe is ready for negotiations.
Duchesne County Commissioner Ted Kappen says the county is also eager to find solutions to the varied issues and sensitive land claims.
"I feel between the tribe and ourselves we spent at least $4 million over the past few years to get this resolved in the courts. We could spend another $4 million, but the solution is to sit down in negotiations and get these things resolved," Kappen said.
In fact, state, county and tribal officials met with each other last week, two days before the decision was released, to begin talks.
But Assistant Attorney General Michael M. Quealy, who has worked on the litigation for more than 18 years, isn't so sure complex issues that have been litigated for decades can be resolved so easily. Quealy said Friday he believes the Appeals Court ruling opens up a "whole new set of complexities" as it attempts to resolve longstanding jurisdictional issues.
The issues run the entire gamut of governmental jurisdiction, including felony prosecutions, civil cases, civil regulatory process, taxation policy, environmental controls, child protection and other issues, Quealy said.
He said the state and local defendants in the suit will be analyzing the implications of the ruling over the next few days and will decide later whether to pursue further legal action.
"Based on a very preliminary assessment, we won a little bit and the tribe won some things, but there are still a lot of practical issues that will have to be worked out," Quealy said.
The decision by the Denver-based federal court is the latest in a series of court decisions that began in 1975 when the Ute Indian Tribe took Duchesne and Uintah counties, Roosevelt City and the state of Utah to court to claim civil and criminal jurisdiction of Ute Tribe members within the original boundaries of the sprawling Uintah Valley Reservation.