Sakezzie v. Utah State Indian Affairs Commission

• Decision Date: 07 February 1963
• Docket Number: No. C 55-61.,C 55-61.
• Parties: Hosteen SAKEZZIE and Thomas Billy, in their own behalf and as members of the class of persons who are Navajo Indians residing within the Aneth Extension of the Navajo Indian Reservation in San Juan County, Utah, Plaintiffs, v. The UTAH STATE INDIAN AFFAIRS COMMISSION and Its Members, Beverly S. Clendenin, Chairman, Harold Drake and Don Smith, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Utah

215 F. Supp. 12

Hosteen SAKEZZIE and Thomas Billy, in their own behalf and as members of the class of persons who are Navajo Indians residing within the Aneth Extension of the Navajo Indian Reservation in San Juan County, Utah, Plaintiffs, v. The UTAH STATE INDIAN AFFAIRS COMMISSION and Its Members, Beverly S. Clendenin, Chairman, Harold Drake and Don Smith, Defendants.

No. C 55-61.

United States District Court D. Utah, Central Division.

February 7, 1963.

Milton A. Oman, Salt Lake City, Utah, for plaintiffs.

Ronald N. Boyce, Asst. Atty. Gen., of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, for defendants.

CHRISTENSEN, District Judge.

MEMORANDUM DECISION

This case in its present post-judgment phase presents further problems in relation to the defendant Commission's statutory duty with reference to a fund entrusted to the State of Utah by Congress from oil royalties from leased land in the so-called Aneth Extension of the Navajo Indian Reservation on condition that it be expended for designated purposes "or for the benefit of the Indians residing therein". Public Law No. 403, 47 Stat. 1418; Chapter 22, Title 63, Utah Code Annotated, 1953.¹

The plaintiffs, pursuant to 28 U.S.C.A. § 2202,² have petitioned for supplemental relief based upon the declaratory judgment entered by this court on August 25, 1961.³ No appeal was taken by either party from this judgment.

It is alleged in the petition that defendants have violated the provisions and declarations of the judgment by:

(a) Failing to use the fund for the direct benefit of the Indian beneficiaries and by threatening to utilize the fund to discharge general governmental or tribal duties.

(b) Being about to expend approximately $300,000 for the construction of a segment of public road extending between Ship Rock, New Mexico and Blanding, Utah, which could be of only remote, if any, benefit to the Indian beneficiaries.

(c) Refusing to invest a portion of such fund in range lands and ranches to make possible year-round livestock operations of the Indian beneficiaries.

(d) Failing to ascertain and give consideration to the views of the beneficiaries in determining the use of the fund.

(e) Refusing to furnish to plaintiffs and their counsel information concerning the receipt and disbursement of the fund.

(f) Refusing to initiate an affirmative program for the benefit of plaintiffs in harmony with the judgment.

The petition asserts that injunctive relief reasonably is necessary to secure compliance by the defendants and that a bond should be required to indemnify the plaintiffs from further losses. Costs, expenses and attorneys' fees from the fund also are sought. In addition to these specific remedies, plaintiffs pray for general relief, and in their brief have added the demand that the individual defendants be required to reimburse the fund for all disbursements since the entry of the judgment.

The defendants' answer puts in issue these allegations and demands, although not questioning the binding effect of the judgment and the findings of fact upon which it was based.

Conclusions of law in conformity with which the judgment entered are reported in 198 F.Supp., beginning at 224. Since the judgment itself has not been reported, some of its main provisions are summarized:

The judgment determined that it is the duty of the defendant Commission to expend the Aneth Extension fund for the benefit of the Indians residing upon the Extension; that as to them the Commission and its members occupy the position of a trustee, and that they owe to the plaintiffs and those they represent, as distinguished from the Navajo officers or tribe in general, the duty to exercise reasonable care, good faith and loyalty, in accordance with exacting fiduciary standards, within the trust and discretion Congress saw fit to repose in the agencies of the State in carrying out the purposes of the Federal Act; that payment of tuition and the construction and maintenance of roads across Extension lands are not the only authorized expenditure of funds for the benefit of the Indians residing in the Extension lands and that the defendants have a wide discretion to provide other benefits; that there is no authority to expend funds for roads outside of the Aneth Extension; that in the management and disbursement of said fund the defendants not only have the duty to refrain from utilizing it for unauthorized purposes but to reasonably expend it for authorized purposes, they being not merely conservators charged with its profitable investment and safeguarding but rather administrators charged with the making of beneficial expenditures from the fund to assist the beneficiaries referred to in the Federal statute, and that the defendants had the duty to ascertain, and at least to consider the views of the beneficiaries concerning expenditures from the fund and to make reasonably accurate, complete and current information available to them.

I deemed some of the expenditures theretofore made, and the refusal to consider other expenditures, on the part of the Commission, somewhat questionable. But holding plaintiffs strictly to their burden of proof, and in deference to the Commission's wide discretion, all but the most substantial of the expenditures were approved. This was done with confidence that clarification by declaratory judgment of the Commission's duties, some of which obviously it had misapprehended, would obviate further difficulty.

It was determined, however, that a proposed expenditure of $500,000 for a hard surface road from the vicinity of Montezuma Creek in the Extension, through Aneth and thence to the Colorado line, was not authorized. The defendants' tentative commitment for financing such a project thereupon was abandoned.

Since the judgment, however, the defendants have committed, but have not yet disbursed, the sum of $175,000 for the construction of a segment of paved road (now complete) traversing a portion of the Extension in the vicinity of Montezuma Creek. The cost for this segment has been computed reasonably with relation to only the portion of the road which traverses the Aneth Extension. But the new road comprises a part of the larger system contemplated by the prior project. Contrary to the present contention of plaintiffs, it was not determined in the main case that such segment, as distinguished from the larger project initially proposed, would not be properly for the benefit of the Indians,⁴ and that question is still open.

The defendants say that the construction of the segment of the road in question will be of some benefit to the Indians residing within the Aneth Extension by providing a part of the only properly engineered road south through the Aneth extension to the Navajo Tribal Subagency at Ship Rock, New Mexico, and the Navajo Chapterhouse used by the plaintiffs in common with other Navajos at Aneth, Utah. This is largely true. And the road moreover generally will facilitate travel and promote tourism in the Extension. The latter considerations will be of only remote benefit to the Indians residing in the Extension. Under the arrangements made by the defendants with the State Highway Department the maintenance of the road will be assumed by the State of Utah, thus relieving the defendant Commission from maintenance charges which they can incur under the statute in proper cases.

It thus must be concluded on the basis of the facts heretofore found and the evidence introduced in the supplemental proceedings that the segment of road in question would benefit the plaintiffs and those whom they represent substantially, but not exclusively or even primarily. It is also plain from the evidence that the motivating purpose of the Commission in constructing this road was not solely to benefit the Indians.

The plaintiffs argue that the prior determination with reference to roads established as the law of the case that roads within the Aneth Extension had to be for the exclusive benefit of the Indians residing there. It is true that the court indicated generally with reference to expenditures by the Commission that the motivating intention in order to justify the expenditure had to be to benefit the Indians, but the specific holding with regard to the proposed expenditure for the Montezuma Road was that a road lying both within and outside the Extension was not shown to be sufficiently for the benefit of the Indians as to be justified. The court's oral pronouncement consistent with the more general written conclusion on the point (TR. Jan. 12, 1961 hearing, pp. 16-17) indicated that effect must be accorded the statutory authorization for the construction of roads within the Extension.⁵

I conclude that expenditures for roads are in a category different under the statute from that of other expenditures which expressly must be for the benefit of the Indians. Congress has indicated that the construction of roads on the Aneth Extension is at least generally speaking a legitimate purpose of expenditures from the fund. And the burden thus is considerably heavier upon the plaintiffs with reference to such an expenditure to show that the Commission abused its discretion.

The defendants on the other hand, would have it determined that the last clause of the authorization does not operate to limit at all the expenditure for roads to projects of benefit to the Indians. I consider this conclusion too broad. I cannot believe that Congress, in view of conflicts of interest, intended with respect to roads to give unlimited power to the State to spend money for roads in the Extension having no relationship to the welfare of the Indians. The three types of expenditures must be considered homogeneous despite their disjunctive form in view of the limitations of the last clause, and the policy and objectives of the legislation.⁶ Any reasonable doubts should be resolved in favor of protection for the Indians.⁷ Were it not for this latter principle peculiarly applicable here, the ordinary rules...