Each of the 490 terminated tribal members were supposed to receive property, stock and cash upon termination, but the judgement funds were not included in any plans for distribution of property or assets established in the Ute Partition Act, Chappabitty said.

Lawyers for the federal government, in their argument for final dismissal of the case, argue that the 2004 statute does not apply to Felter v. Kempthorne, which concerns "improper termination of federally recognized Indian status," not claims "concerning the losses to or mismanagement of trust funds."

The lawyers also contend that Felter and other terminated Uintas had not taken legal steps to ask for an accounting of the millions the tribe had been paid by the federal government.

However, the terminated members argue in their court documents that they met with task force members from the American Indian Policy Review Commission who came to Utah in the 1970s to interview them regarding the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the tribe's trust assets.

"The task force went back to Congress and said there should be immediate investigations into the situation on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation involving BIA mismanagement of trust assets and unethical BIA administrative actions throughout each phase of the termination process," said Felter. "This was in 1976, to date nothing has been done."

In the mid-1950s, the federal government was moving toward terminating memberships in all Indian tribes. Although that policy was reversed in the 1970s, and many terminated tribes were reinstated, the mixed-blood Uintas of the Ute Tribe remain disenfranchised. The Northern Ute Tribe was the only tribe in the nation to have just a portion of their total enrolled members terminated.

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