Terminated members of Ute Tribe dispute time limits on claims

An attorney for terminated members of the Ute Indian Tribe says that a federal statute preserves the claims of his 650 clients, despite the federal government's insistence that they have run out of time to fight a 59-year-old mandate that removed their names from the tribe's membership rolls.

Dennis Chappabitty, an Indian-rights attorney from Sacramento, Calif., says a law passed by Congress three years ago proves the statute of limitations hasn't even begun to run for lead plaintiffs Oranna Felter of Roosevelt, Cal Hackford of Whiterocks and hundreds of other terminated Uinta Band members and their descendants.

In 1954, the Ute Partition Act removed the names of 490 Uintas with less than 50 percent Ute blood from tribal rolls. The majority of them were children. Felter was 10 years old at the time

Chappabitty's latest legal brief says the court must recognize that federal law bars the statute of limitations "from running on any claim, including any claim in litigation pending on the date of enactment" of the 2004 Department of Interior statute.

The rule allows time for affected tribes or individual Indians to be furnished with an accounting of funds so they can determine whether there has been a loss.

His clients have yet to receive any such accounting from the federal government, said Chappabitty, adding the money they are owed could be in the multi-millions of dollars.

The terminated members of the Uinta band in 2002 filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., to have the Ute Partition Act declared invalid. Felter has successfully fought in court for her hunting and fishing rights, but the case filed by Chappabitty five years ago was their first attempt to have the act overturned that had ended their tribal identity.

Federal Judge Richard W. Roberts dismissed their case last year on the grounds that the statute of limitations expired in 1967. However, an appellate court this past January reversed Roberts' ruling.

The appeals court ordered him to consider whether the terminated Uintas had access to their financial records and receive an accounting of what had transpired before ruling that the statute of limitations had run its course in the case.

In 1950, the federal Court of Claims handed down a $32 million "judgment" on behalf of the Ute Indian Tribe. In Chappabitty's recent brief before the court, he noted that the Court of Claims funds were ordered paid to the tribe at a time when his clients "were federally recognized members of the Uintah Band of Ute Indians."