Trust fund bill controversial in Aneth meeting

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, introduced legislation Monday that would award control of the Utah Navajo Trust Fund to the Utah Dineh Committee, prompting a heated meeting in Aneth, Utah, Tuesday that resulted in two men being escorted out and a third jailed for disorderly conduct.

Denton Ben of the Descendants of K'aayelii, an organization that maintains residents of the Aneth Extension should get a bigger piece of the trust fund pie, said he was transported to the Shiprock jail by Navajo Nation police after he tried to defend his cousin and uncle, who were escorted out of the meeting for being argumentative.

He was released three hours later and the charges dropped. However, Ben said he found the back window and a taillight on his car smashed the next morning.

Aneth Chapter President John Billie said he closed the meeting shortly after the incident.

"It got out of hand," he said.

However, he said, he didn't blame the three disruptors for being upset.

"We found out there had been secret meetings between Senator Bennett, (former council delegate) Mark Maryboy, (current council delegate) Davis Filfred and (former chapter president) Leonard Lee," Billie said, "and they had come up with this legislation behind closed doors."

Billie was further nonplussed to find out his vice president, Bill Todachennie, had signed off on the legislation on behalf of Aneth Chapter.

"I told him, 'You can't do that!'" Billie recalled. "We need to bring this before the people."

Current contact information could not be found for Maryboy, Lee or Todachennie. Filfred was not in the Navajo Nation Council delegates' office or at the chapter house Wednesday.

At issue is the $28 million Utah Navajo Trust, comprised of 37.5 percent of the royalties from oil wells on Utah Navajo land, most of them located in Aneth Chapter.

The trust fund was created by Congress in 1933 to assure Utah Navajos benefited from the oil and gas pumped out of their land (the remainder of the royalties went, and continue to go, to the tribe).

At the time, the trust was reserved for the residents of the Aneth Extension - roughly between Montezuma Creek, Utah, and the Colorado border - where most of the oil wells are located.

In 1968, Bennett's father, Sen. Wallace F. Bennett, succeeded in expanding the beneficiary class (illegally, according to the Descendants of K'aayelii) to include all Navajos living in San Juan County, Utah.

For the past 17 years, the state of Utah has been embroiled in a lawsuit involving the trust. Utah Navajos claim the state - which has acted as trustee - has lost years' worth of records, mismanaged assets, and basically misplaced millions of dollars in trust funds.

Late last year, then-Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. (who, to complicate matters still further, was appointed ambassador to China in May) asked Congress to release Utah from its trustee responsibilities.

Since then, several contentious meetings have been held in the Utah area of the reservation to determine who or what should replace the state as trustee.

The Utah Dineh Committee, which was established in 1959 to allocate the funds, was the choice of Council Delegate Kenneth Maryboy, who represents Aneth, Mexican Water, and Red Mesa chapters.

The tribe's official position is that its Investment Committee should handle the trust. The Descendants of K'aayelii want to form a nonprofit corporation to administer it, with 37.5 percent of the $28 million in the trust staying in the Aneth Extension.

While Red Mesa Chapter supports Bennett's new bill, S 1690, Billie said his chapter is still bitterly divided and needs more time to come to consensus.

"They're rushing this thing through," he said. "It needs a lot more talk."

In addition, Billie said, the whole process smacks of the very paternalism that created this whole mess.

"We're being dictated to from Washington," he said. "We're being bullied around like back in the 1800s."

In a press release issued Monday, Bennett stated the bill does just the opposite - returns control of the funds to Utah Navajos.

"This money belongs to all the Navajo residents of San Juan County, and they - not the government - know best how to address their needs," said Bennett. "This bill allows the Navajo people to take control over their transportation, health care, and education without having to rely on the state to pass through funds that already belong to them. I am pleased to continue my father's work on this issue and bring this law into the 21st Century."

Billie said he hasn't decided how to handle the situation, and is watching the Navajo Nation Council to see how it will react.

"What needs to take place is for the Navajo Nation to stand up and say, 'Just a minute. We need to find out what these people want to do,'" Billie said. "Meeting behind closed doors is not the way we're supposed to do things here."

Bennett's bill has been assigned to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.

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