'Ute' is more of a white man's issue

RANDLETT, Uintah County — Tracy Christensen heard it on the radio on her way to work. Something about the appropriateness of the University of Utah using Utes for its nickname and the Ute drum and feathers for its logo.

Her ears perked up. Tracy knows Utes. She is one; has been all her life.

She lives here in Randlett, population 220, in the heart of Ute country. Seven miles away is Ft. Duchesne, headquarters of the sprawling Uintah and Ouray reservation, at 4.5 million acres the second-largest Indian reservation in the United States.

Tracy works at the Randlett Mercantile, the town's only commercial enterprise, where the solid wood floorboards have been propping up a store since they were first hammered down in 1914. She's the resident short-order cook and she'll whip you up a breakfast burrito that'll make you consider the seven-mile detour you took off U.S. 40 to get here your wisest move of the entire day.

Her reaction to suggestions that there's something disrespectful about the state university up in Salt Lake City calling itself the Utes?

"Oh, I don't know," she says. "No reaction, really."

Does she, as a Ute by birth, have a problem with, say, a football team also using the name and logo?

"You know what?" she says. "I don't."

Tracy admits, she's no sports fan, "not even close," but she grew up with the University of Utah being the Utes and has never given it a second thought.

"I don't find it offensive, if that's what you're asking," she says. "And I've never heard anyone around here say it's a problem. You see the emblem everywhere. A lot of people buy the jackets and hats and stuff. They like them. No, I don't think the school is doing anything bad."

For that matter, neither does she think the high school in nearby Vernal is doing anything bad by calling itself the Utes and using a feather in its logo — and an Indian as its mascot.

The Uintah High School Utes have pretty much covered all the local Native American bases — since Ute is the name of the resident Indian tribe and Uintah the name of the predominant Ute band.

Tracy's lack of outrage is seconded by Art Cesspooch, a customer who has stopped into the mercantile for some quick supplies.

Art lives in Ft. Duchesne and runs a company called AC/DC Oilfield Services that provides labor and other necessities to the outfits working the rich deposits of fossil fuel that lie underneath reservation land.