"We are people who attach ourselves to the land and now after all the treaties and the agreements, we're here. We think they should try to get along with us because we're here." - Roland McCook, vice-chairman of the Ute Indian Tribe.
"We hate it when we're accused of being racist. We don't treat them badly; that's not true and never has been true. . . . The hate is not coming from non-Indians. Hate comes, unfortunately, from some of them; some just distrust and don't like white people." - Brad Hancock, Roosevelt city manager.
Two colors - brown and white.
At the heart of social problems in the Uinta Basin are two cultures, one that belongs to white settlers, the other to Indians forced onto this barren land 130 years ago.
People in these cultures rarely mix. They don't seem to get along or understand each other. And now, some on both sides seem to have drawn a line in the basin's high desert earth that will be difficult to erase.
Animosity escalated last week when tribal leaders asked their members to boycott Roosevelt merchants over a decadeslong feud about jurisdiction, taxation and law and order.
About a dozen Utah legislators found themselves in the middle of this dispute Friday as tribal leaders asked them to mediate the fight and help get whites and Indians talking again.
Rep. John Valentine, R-Orem, one of 11 lawmakers who attended the legislative Indian Laison Committee meeting, asked for some background on the tangled and emotional issue. "We're not from this area, and we don't understand it the way you do," he said.
Hard feelings date back to before 1960, explained Roland McCook, vice-chairman of the Ute Indian Tribe. About this time, tribal leaders perceived that its members were being mistreated by local law enforcement. There were beatings in custody, McCook said, even deaths.
"The Ute Tribe decided to take control of our own people. We wanted our own law and order code."
In the first of a series of controversial actions, the tribe adopted a Law and Order Code, which the courts said extended to within "the original, exterior boundary" of the reservation.
What has followed over the past several decades is a battle of control over who can tax and enforce laws in the sometimes murky jurisdictional boundaries of the reservation.
"As neighbors . . . I think we're all tied to the land, and I certainly hope we can all learn to be better neighbors and work these things out," said Sen. Alarik Myrin, R-Altamont, a second-generation rancher whose legislative district covers the basin.
But several tribal members in the packed Tribal Office conference room followed these comments with stories of racism, police brutality and other injustices done to the 3,200 Utes who live on the reservation 120 miles east of Salt Lake City.
And this seems to be the crux of a battle that has grown recently to name-calling, court action and the boycott.
"This is not a jurisdiction problem, this is a law and order problem," Ruby Atwine, a tribal member, told the group of lawmakers.
Ute tribal leaders want to have jurisdiction over their own members on land they say includes Roosevelt and thousands of acres of farmland that have been sold to whites over the years. They also want area law enforcement to let them discipline their own members for minor crimes.
Without consulting tribal leaders, Roosevelt city attorneys got U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins to lift a six-year-old injunction that allowed tribal members to make purchases in Roosevelt without paying sales tax. It also prohibited Roosevelt police from citing or arresting tribal members for misdemeanors such as traffic violations and shoplifting.
McCook, after giving a long history of the trouble, said: "We extended the hand of friendship. After two months, the talks bogged down. At this point, we're not ready to come back to the table" and talk anymore.
In calling for the boycott, tribal leaders said they weren't reacting to Jenkins' action but to Roosevelt's lack of communication.
"Roosevelt should be a good neighbor," McCook said. "They should have come to us and let us know (they were going to ask for the injunction)."
Atwine said Roosevelt police harass and abuse Indians accused of minor criminal violations in situations where they would leave whites alone. "They think we are nothing but a bunch of drunks."
The Indian community has problems, Atwine said. She sees members of her tribe staggering down the street. "But I've seen non-Indians staggering down them same streets."
Indians get no different treatment than whites, says Roosevelt City Manager Brad Hancock. "We use courtesy," he said. "We bend over backwards, and we'll continue to do that." But if they break the law, Indians will be arrested like anyone else.
About 40,000 people live in the Basin - about 8 percent of these residents are members of the Ute tribe who live on the Uintah Ouray Indian Reservation. The two cultures are mingled by geography and are joined by a commitment to the land but are rarely seen together.
There were no brown faces on the photographed pages of the local paper last week.
There are no tribal members on the Roosevelt police force and no Indians working at computers in the Uinta Basin Applied Technology Center.
The three day legislative tour illustrated how the two groups rarely mingle. Few Indians attended the town meetings in Roosevelt or Vernal. One Ute student attended the Vernal town meeting as part of a class assignment, but he sat with family members, not with more than a dozen classmates who also were there as part of their assignment.
Few Indians attended the evening meals hosted for legislators, while dozens of local business-people, commissioners and city officials came and chatted with the visitors.
A line of women and girls stretched around Vernal's Western Park pavilion building waiting to get into a homemaker's bazaar, but there were few, if any, Indians in sight.
White politicians are careful not to identify the problems along racial lines but instead characterize the obvious rift in terms of economic extremes. Rep. Beverly Evans, R-Altamont, was not born or raised in the Basin but has lived here most of her adult life.
"There are two worlds out here - non-Indians and Indians, the haves and the have-nots. You find few Indians in the towns. It's unfortunate, but what can you do?"
Hancock said that 99 percent of the residents of the city of Roosevelt are white. The 3,200 tribal members who drive into the white towns are visitors, not inhabitants. Tribal leaders said that less than 3 percent of Ute Indians live off the reservation.
Evans works at the state's Applied Technology Center in Roosevelt, where a walk through the classrooms Wednesday showed mostly white faces behind the rows of computer screens.
"Few (Indians) attend our classes (at the ATC). We've tried to take some classes out to the reservation; but with little success," said Evans.
Hancock said he'd tried to hire tribal members onto the 10-member Roosevelt police force, but none applied.
Rep. Myrin, R-Altamont, reminded tribal leaders that both sides feel the same about the other. Non-Indians feel a similar fear when their jurisdiction is threatened.
"They were afraid to be under your jurisdiction. I think you can understand the fear on both sides," he said. "It's going to be a difficult thing to work out."
While white politicians walked gingerly through the race discussion, Indians were more blunt, talking about the racial discrimination they feel and asking lawmakers to mediate.
Will relations get better? Perhaps. But McCook said the state should look to help Utes set up their own school district on the reservation, while Ute board member Roseline Taveapont said tribal leaders are conducting voter registration drives on the reservation and may encourage "bloc" voting for white local candidates who promise to consider Indian concerns.
Tribal Councilman Raymond Murray asked lawmakers to use their clout to make sure the person who replaces Duchesne County Commissioner Curtis Dastrop is able to work with Indians.
There is a human side to this discussion, McCook said.
"These are human issues, moral issues. This reservation was made for the Uinta Indians from along the Wasatch Front and as far away as Colorado . . . we were herded in here like sheep," McCook said. "This was the reservation that was set aside for us.
"They (the white settlers) came here by choice. They live here today by choice. They should be the ones to get along with us."