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- By Native News Online Staff
The Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation filed a federal lawsuit Friday against Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) and the heads of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources and Colorado Parks & Wildlife, alleging a state law unlawfully denies the Tribe equal access to ancestral lands.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado on Dec. 19, 2025, challenges the constitutionality and application of House Bill 25-1163, now codified as C.R.S. § 33-12-103.8. The law provides free access 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.
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The Tribe argues the exclusion is discriminatory and ignores its deep historical and cultural ties to lands that include many of Colorado’s state parks. According to the complaint, much of the land covered by the legislation lies within the historic aboriginal territory of Ute bands that today comprise the Tribe.
The filing follows the Tribe’s public condemnation of the bill in May 2025, when leaders described it as perpetuating “cultural and historical genocide.” The Tribe says it requested inclusion during the legislative process and proposed amendments documenting its longstanding connection to the land, but the Colorado General Assembly declined to incorporate those changes.
The lawsuit alleges violations of multiple federal laws, the U.S. Constitution and the Brunot Agreement, a federal agreement signed by all Ute bands that reserved hunting, fishing and gathering rights in ceded lands that now include Colorado state parks. The complaint also argues the law places an undue burden on Tribal members seeking access to sacred sites in their traditional homelands.
The Ute people are the oldest continuous residents of what is now Colorado, according to the Tribe. In 1880, bands that now make up the Ute Indian Tribe were forcibly removed at gunpoint to the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in Utah.
Tribal Chairman Shaun Chapoose said the legislation fails to acknowledge that history.
"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. We will not stand idly by and pay for the same privilege to access our places to pray, to hunt, to fish, we will not be erased by Colorado from these lands," Chapoose said.
The lawsuit seeks a court declaration requiring the state to revise C.R.S. § 33-12-103.8 to include the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.
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