Following the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the Northern Ute Tribe began repurchasing alienated reservation lands. In 1948 the federal government returned some 726,000 acres to the tribe in what is called the Hill Creek Extension. In a 1986 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Appeals Court ruling granting the Northern Ute Tribe "legal jurisdiction" over three million acres of alienated reservation lands -- an important decision for the future of the tribe and the region.

See: Donald Callaway, Joel Janetski, and Omer C. Stewart, "Ute," in Great Basin, edited by Warren L. D'Azevedo, vol. 11 of Handbook of North American Indians (1986); Fred A. Conetah, A History of the Northern Ute People (1982); Joseph G. Jorgensen, The Sun Dance Religion: Power for the Powerless (1972); Kathryn L. MacKay, "The Strawberry Valley Reclamation Project and the Opening of the Uintah Indian Reservation," Utah Historical Quarterly, 50 (Winter 1982); Floyd A. O'Neil, "Reluctant Suzerainty: The Uintah and Ouray Reservation," Utah Historical Quarterly, 39 (Spring 1971); Floyd A. O'Neil and Kathryn L. MacKay, A History of the Uintah-Ouray Ute Lands, American West Occasional Papers no. 10 (1979).

David Rich Lewis