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[forwarded by Pat Morris. Thanks...]

01/26/2000
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/edits0126a.htm

Giveback for Indians

Jan. 26 - A historic announcement that Uncle Sam will give back
some land to the Indians in Utah is both welcome and confusing.

Welcome, because it corrects a wrong done decades ago.

Confusing, because it left several questions unanswered.

The Utes on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, located in eastern
Utah north of the town of Green River, are ethnically related to the
Southern Utes and Ute Mountain Utes in southwestern Colorado.

However, they function legally apart from their Colorado kin.

But all three tribes have endured their share of broken government
promises.

In 1882, the feds signed a treaty deeding the Utah reservation to
the Utes. But in 1916, the government took back about 89,000
acres for a U.S. Navy oil-shale reserve.

Recently, however, U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson
announced that the government would return the 89,000 acres to
the Utes.

Clearly, this move corrects a wrong - but it also involves a few
twists.

The government has asked the Utes to dedicate a portion of
royalties they earn from the returned lands toward the cleanup of
a potentially dangerous uranium mill tailings pile near Moab.

The hazardous wastes are of special concern because of their
location: between Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and near
the Colorado River - and therefore upstream of the Grand Canyon,
Lakes Powell and Mead, and much of the water used by major
western cities.

The Utes really should not be held responsible for a problem they
didn't create. But the mining company that left the 110-foot-high
tailings pile, Denver-based Atlas Corp., went bankrupt in 1998.
Since the cleanup will benefit so many states from Utah to
California, Congress should be morally obliged to use national funds
to fix the mess.

In addition, the Utes have promised to keep a quarter mile of land
along the Green River open to public recreational use. This deal
should please boaters, since the river sections through the
reservation are among the most scenic and historic in the
intermountain West.

Meantime, assuming that the land belonged to the feds, a large
group of citizen-activists had proposed that part of the
undeveloped oilshale reserve be included in a proposed wilderness
area. Since the reserve now reverts to the Indians, this idea likely
must be taken off the table. What will become of the pristine
parcels is unclear.

The best news for the public in all this is that the Utes have a
better track record of keeping their word than the feds.
 

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