During the summer of 1951 the Albuquerque Area Office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs engaged the authors for one month to act as anthropological consultants to groups of Southern Ute Indians who were attempting to devise plans for the efficient utilization of land claims payments accruing to them from the federal government. The intention of this paper is to present the data concerning (a) the attempts of these Indians to make their own decisions (and to accept responsibility for those decisions) in terms of their own cultural values, (b) the different attitudes adopted by the two Southern Ute groups (the Ute Mountain Ute at Towaoc, Colorado, and Allen Canyon, Utah, and the Southern Ute proper at Ignacio, Colorado), and (c) the roles played by Indian Service, tribal employees, and the writers. Secondly, we shall indicate how recent events in Southern Ute culture-history have led to present involvements when a real attempt is being made to give these people self-determination.
Results of 1988 coal exploratory drilling in the Fruitland Formation, western part of the Southern Ute Indian Reservation, La Plata County, Colorado; lithologic descriptions, preliminary correlations, and proximate analyses of coal samples