- Details
- By Chez Oxendine
- Policy and Law
The Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation has sued Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and state natural resources officials, saying a new law shuts the tribe out of free access to lands it has used since “time immemorial.”
The lawsuit, filed Dec. 19 in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, challenges House Bill 25‑1163. The law gives free entry to Colorado state parks for members of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, but not the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.
Tribal Chairman Shaun Chapoose said the law ignores the tribe’s history and its ties to the land.
“Colorado's parks bill is a broken promise codified into law. It is shameful. It acknowledges the profound ties to our homelands while demanding our exiled tribe pay an entrance fee to visit our own sacred grounds from which they drove us,” Chapoose said in a statement included in the tribe’s press release and lawsuit.
According to the complaint, much of the land covered by the law sits within the aboriginal territory of Ute bands that today make up the tribe. The filing says the exclusion is discriminatory and denies tribal members access to places they use for prayer, hunting and fishing.
The tribe opposed the bill during the 2025 legislative session and asked lawmakers to add it to the measure. The complaint says the Colorado General Assembly declined to make that change even after the tribe submitted documentation of its historical connection to the land.
The lawsuit argues the law violates federal statutes, the U.S. Constitution and the Brunot Agreement, an 1873 agreement signed by all Ute bands that reserved hunting, fishing and gathering rights on ceded lands. Similar reserved rights appear in many 19th century agreements across the West, and courts have repeatedly held that tribes retain those rights unless Congress clearly removes them.
The Ute people are the oldest continuous residents of what is now Colorado, according to the complaint. Bands that now form the Ute Indian Tribe were forced to the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in Utah in 1880.
The tribe is asking the court to order Colorado to revise the statute so that members of the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation receive the same access as the other two Ute tribes.
