The University of Utah gets millions from using the Utes name. But what does the Ute Tribe get?

Editor’s note • This story was produced in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit news organization that supports local newsrooms in reporting on higher education, and the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. Fellowship.

The first group of Ute students to attend the University of Utah together arrived in 1951 after traveling by bus for three hours from their desert reservation. They were 11 freshmen, the most who had ever enrolled at one time.

To cover their tuition, the Ute Indian Tribe was using federal reparations it had just received for stolen lands. The U.’s student newspaper published a story on the new undergraduates, saying the school’s well-known Utes mascot “will at last have some country cousins on campus.”

A lot has changed since then. At the time, Native Americans in Utah were prohibited from voting, a ban not lifted until six years later. Gone, too, are the racist caricatures and live portrayals of a “Crimson Warrior,” a white student who dressed as an Indian for football games at the state’s flagship school.

Now, the Northern Utes and the U. have an agreement that gives the university permission to respectfully use the tribe’s name in athletics, making it one of the few remaining schools allowed by the NCAA to use Native imagery.

But the number of Ute students in 1951 — 73 years ago — is actually more than the number attending the school today. The school does not keep exact tallies, but estimates put today’s total at fewer than 10. Some years there have been fewer, or even none.

This fall, the terms of the long-standing agreement are up for debate again as the U. and the tribe work toward an updated version that will take effect in 2025. And the negotiations come as the university enters a new era in sports as a member of the Big 12 conference, where the U. is expected to earn millions more in media rights and its teams are attracting a brighter national spotlight.

The coinciding changes invite the question: Is the University of Utah doing enough for the tribe in return to make it a fair deal?

The Salt Lake Tribune has investigated the terms of past agreements and the findings point to a lopsided relationship, where the university has continued to reap clear and substantial financial benefits.

Meanwhile, the tribe’s primary request to help its youth succeed — both in K-12 education and in college — has largely been limited or gone unmet.

Here is a breakdown of The Tribune’s findings:

• No real enrollment progress: The U. doesn’t formally track the enrollment of Ute students. But its estimates for the number attending the school now show little to no substantial gains since the 1950s. For example, it appears only one enrolled Ute was among the university’s 35,000 students in 2023.

• No minimum requirements for scholarships: The tribe has asked for scholarships for its students to attend the university. But the U. has no minimums for the number it must award or the amount. In fact, for the past two academic years — not counting the one currently underway — there were zero Ute students receiving that money. And some qualified students are being passed over.

• Not providing enough to cover tuition: The latest agreement states a specific scholarship amount, and the U. has declined the tribe’s requests to boost that number to cover tuition increases — leaving at least a $2,600 gap for those now granted a “full” award.

• No graduation benchmarks: If Ute students do attend the university, there are no mandates for monitoring their progress or providing help if they’re struggling with classes. And the agreement doesn’t have any requirements or goals for graduation rates for those students, which is also not tracked.

• Limited progress in supporting K-12: The U. is additionally supposed to support Ute students in K-12. But its investment is small, at $100,000 per year given to the tribe since 2020. And data shows no real gains as the tribe’s kids living on and near the eastern Utah reservation continue to have the worst test scores and the largest high school dropout rates in the state.

The point of the agreements, from the U.’s point of view, “has never been to create a capture campaign and build an enrollment funnel to the University of Utah” of the tribe’s kids, said Thomas Chase Hagood, senior associate vice president for academic affairs.

Even with the specific commitment in the agreement to improve the tribe’s access to education, it isn’t the school’s job to push Utes to go to the U., Hagood said. The university also points to the tribe’s declining population as the reason that its enrollment of Ute students hasn’t grown over time.

Today, the U.’s athletics programs are making more than ever, though, with the team identity that gives it a unique brand among other colleges. That includes millions from merchandising alone that uses the Utes’ name and the feather logo. There are also media rights, sponsorships, advertising and ticket sales that created $126 million in revenue for the school’s sports enterprise this past fiscal year.

Though the tribe’s leaders are waiting to comment while negotiations on the new agreement — officially known as a memorandum of understanding, or MOU — continue, they have indicated that the number of scholarships their kids receive is disproportionate and disappointing. And, they say, their request to the U. to reach more Ute students has been brushed off.

So they’re considering a change that would dramatically alter the tribe’s trajectory: The governing Ute Business Committee has proposed lowering the blood quantum, or the level of ancestry needed to be enrolled as an official tribal member.

It would be a substantial shift for a tribe that has prided itself on its lineage, with the highest blood quantum bar of any tribe in the country. And it would swiftly increase the Ute Tribe’s size — as well as how many of its students can benefit from the U.’s use of the name.

In this story

• How much is the U. making off the Utes’ name?

• Some qualified Ute students have fallen through the cracks

• The scholarship doesn’t fully cover tuition — despite the tribe’s request

• The Ute Tribe is considering a major change that would help more students qualify

• The U. Says it’s “doing better” than expected

• Is the U. fulfilling its K-12 promises?

• Some feel the tribe would be “otherwise invisible” without the U.

U. making millions off Utes’ name

A soda cozy that celebrates the “Runnin’ Utes.” A foam finger that says, “Go Utes!” Coach Kyle Whittingham’s favorite sideline hat with the feather logo. T-shirts, mini footballs, key chains, even diamond jewelry — there’s no doubt the University of Utah makes a hefty profit from the Utes-themed gear sold to its loud and loyal fans.

It’s not a question of whether the school should stop using or identifying itself with the Utes’ name and imagery.

Leaders for the Northern Utes — the tribe most associated with the name — support the connection. That backing came most prominently in a letter written by the tribe to the NCAA in 2005 that allowed the U. to continue using the name even after other colleges and universities in the country were pushed to drop their Native mascots.

The Ute Business Committee wrote at the time that “the university’s affiliation with the Ute name is a source of pride for tribal members.” And, members said, it is their sovereign right — and theirs alone — to approve of it.

They first had a verbal agreement with the U. in 1972, with a first written document in 2003.

With that, the university collects royalties on five Utes-related trademarks: “Utes,” “Utah Utes,” “Runnin’ Utes” for the men’s basketball team, “Lady Utes” for the women’s basketball team and the feather logo. For those, the U. raked in about $2 million in royalties in the past fiscal year.

Not all of that is from the Utes’ name — but a large portion is. Items with the feather logo, for instance, are its biggest seller among the trademarks, according to a report from the school’s auxiliary business development team.

The athletics programs, overall, brought in $12 million total from all trademarks, partnerships, sponsorships and royalties combined. And, after factoring out what it spends, financial reports note that the U. pulled in $1.8 million in profits for sports in the year.

That’s only one year. The school has been using and collecting on the Utes’ name since 1927.

Meanwhile, scholarships for students who are enrolled Utes were put in place in 2014, after nearly 30 years of pushing from tribal leaders. It’s one of the few obligations the U. expressly has in the MOU.

In no single year has the spending for the Ute student scholarship exceeded $51,000, according to data provided to The Tribune by the school.

Over the 10 academic years it’s been in place through last spring, the U. has spent less than $226,000 total. That sum is roughly 1% of what the school brought in from those trademark royalties over that same decade.

The school has repeatedly insisted that the agreement is not about money. “We need to be clear about that,” then-President David Pershing said at the agreement signing in 2014. “This is about educational opportunity.”

But if the scholarships are one way to look at how many Ute students are actually getting that “educational opportunity,” it’s not a lot.

Passing over qualified Ute students

When Nakisha Mart was applying for college, she landed on the University of Utah largely because of its connection with her tribe.

Growing up, she hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to immerse herself in her culture. It wasn’t until Mart was a teenager that she moved from Hawaii to live on the Northern Utes’ Uintah and Ouray Reservation in eastern Utah, where her mom is from. She started learning there, and has worked hard since, to practice beading and how to cook up a light and crispy fry bread.

Mart is an example of the kind of student the U. is supposed to assist with the designated Ute scholarship. But she didn’t receive the funding during her first two years at the school. She is now, for the first time, only as a junior.

The lack of specific requirements in the MOU for the U. to meet with scholarships includes no mandated awards to qualified students. The MOU states only that the scholarship goes to students who are “enrolled member[s] of the Ute Indian Tribe,” taking a full course load and in good academic standing.

Mart, for instance, checks all the boxes. She is five-eighths Ute, meaning she meets the minimum for what’s called the “blood quantum” set by the tribe; that’s the amount of ancestry, or bloodline, needed to be an enrolled member. Some tribes’ levels are as low as 1/32; using the same denominator, the Utes’ translates to 20/32.

The U. is supposed to, with the agreement, help Ute seniors at the high schools on and near the reservation with the process of applying for college each fall, including filling out the applications for scholarships and financial aid.

That pledge is included in every version of the MOU that’s been signed. The first one from 2003 says the U. promises to address recruitment, in particular, to get more Ute students to apply to the state’s flagship school. Later versions just say to apply to any postsecondary institution, which is why the U. says it isn’t obligated to persuade the tribe’s kids to go there.

But Mart said she had never heard of and was never told about the scholarship in the MOU — neither at Altamont High School, nor from the university before or after she applied, she said, even though her application materials noted she is Native and listed her residence on the reservation in the Uinta Basin.

“There definitely needs to be a lot more outreach about that money,” Mart said. “Kids don’t know about this scholarship.”

And when Ute students do apply for admission, it appears nothing flags their application that would alert them or the U. that they should be receiving the money.

“It’s not due to an intentional, deliberate kind of thing,” believes Forrest Cuch, a former education director for the Ute Tribe. “But there needs to be more tracking and monitoring,” so the MOU isn’t made up of empty promises.

The Ute Indian Tribe’s Education Department asked for an amendment to the current MOU to allow its staff to share a list with the U. of eligible students — which it tracks — who should be getting the money. The U. has not signed off on that change, which has been pending for three years. A similar provision was included in the original agreement but was later dropped somewhere among the various updates.

Scholarship doesn’t fully cover tuition — despite tribe’s request

Cuch was a major force in getting the scholarship in place at the U.

In 2005, he caused a stir during the NCAA discussions when he said publicly that the MOU should include dedicated money for the tribe’s kids. The eyes of many were on the U. at that time to see how the school would work out the concerns over its nickname and symbols. The comment indicated for the first time it might not be as amicable behind the scenes as it appeared.

There “should be some financial consideration since the university benefited financially from the use of the Ute name,” Cuch said at the time. “Frankly, in all due respect, this is the business world, and that’s the way it works.”

Based on the discussions that followed, Ute leaders said they thought the MOU was updated after the tribe’s letter of support to the NCAA. The U. said that was not the case, and there would be no “quid pro quo” to purchase the name, a stance that has continued in subsequent agreements.

Now that they are in place, the scholarships are a big reason the tribe continues allowing the U. to use its name, Cuch said.

In the 10 full academic years the Ute scholarship has been offered, 15 different students have received some funding from it. The 2021-22 school year saw the most students, at seven, according to the U.’s data, which does not identify specific recipients in order to comply with student privacy laws.

Most years, it’s been three or four. For the first two years, it was two students. This fall, it’s three, including Mart. That’s not enough, said Cuch, who is an alum of what was then-Westminster College, now a university, in Salt Lake City.

When the tribe first asked for scholarships in 1996, its leaders said there should be 10 guaranteed in exchange for “decades of character appropriation.” It later requested 20.

The school initially promised to award two scholarships per year to Ute students. A 2016 update to the MOU took out the specific number. The tribe hoped that the school would provide more awards if more students qualified. But it meant the school no longer had a quota.

The Tribune submitted a public records request July 1 to review the annual reports on the scholarship that the U. is required to provide to the tribe; the university has not yet fully filled that, providing only the most recent report.

Meanwhile, the annual value of the Ute scholarship is listed in the MOU as the price of tuition in 2014. The U. is not required to keep pace with inflation or tuition increases; tuition and fees now average roughly $10,600 per year. The school has not agreed to a request from the tribe to amend the MOU to increase the award amount.

The shortfall created by that decision doesn’t account for books or housing, either.

“The Ute Tribe Scholarship MOU sets the maximum for that stipend as $8,000, thus that is that scholarship program’s maximum annual award,” U. spokesperson Rebecca Walsh wrote in an email to The Tribune. The U. sets aside funding, largely from private donations, each year to cover the scholarship, she said, and has “not had to go over that amount.”

For now, Mart has cobbled together money from federal grants and a scholarship granted directly from the tribe to cover the gap left by the U.’s award. That means the Ute Tribe is using its money to put her through school.

”Without the scholarship from my tribe,” she said, “it would be financially impossible for me to go to college.”

It’s anticipated that changing the award amount will be a major push from the tribe in the 2025 agreement negotiations.

Tribe looks at major change

Seven students applied this year for the Ute scholarship — but four of them, Walsh said, didn’t meet the requirements because they are not officially enrolled members. They do not meet the blood quantum.

Three years ago, the tribe asked for another addendum to the agreement to expand the scholarship to any students who have Ute blood, officially enrolled or not. It also was refused by the U., which has not often accepted changes outside of the five-year renewal cycle.

Such an expansion would certainly cost the U. more. But at double the current price tag, the annual cost would still be roughly only 2.5% of its annual sports trademark royalties.

The tribe’s governing Business Committee declined to comment for this story, saying it “is still in the process of working through this matter with the university at this time.”

But the Utes’ attorney, Jeremy Patterson, said leaders have a different plan in mind that would help more students qualify. They have set in motion an attempt to amend the tribe’s constitution, he said, to lower the five-eighths blood quantum level required to be an enrolled Ute to a quarter. A vote is expected later this year.

It would be a landmark update, widely expanding who qualifies as a member and boosting the tribe’s population, which has dwindled in recent years. Currently, even the 10 children of Business Committee Chairman Julius T. Murray III do not meet the quantum requirement set in 1989.

Kayla Kidd, 21, doesn’t meet the lineage level either and is one U. student who would benefit. She is a Ute descendant, grew up on the reservation, knows the traditions and attends powwows.

“If they did a scholarship for descendants,” she said, “that would be a big resource. It would help me not stress so much about how to afford to go.”

She is currently a junior, studying criminal justice, which she wants to use to work on the reservation.

Kidd currently receives the Ovintiv Native American Scholarship; it’s $5,000 per year and paid for by an oil company that operates in the Uinta Basin on the reservation. Preference is given to Ute students, including those who aren’t enrolled.

She also receives up to $4,000 a year from the Ute Tribe Employment Rights Office, meaning like Mart, the tribe is helping to fund her education.

Those combined don’t fully cover her tuition. So she also works an on-campus job at the U.’s American West Center, which has long supported the Ute Tribe, including recording members’ oral histories.

Walsh noted that the U. has a list of various scholarships for Indigenous students, including the Native Student Scholarship that started in spring 2023. Only students who are enrolled members of one of Utah’s sovereign nations qualify, so Kidd still wouldn’t be able to get that money.

Most recently, in spring 2024, there were 37 recipients of the new scholarship, with one who is Ute. It’s unclear why that Ute student wasn’t receiving the scholarship from the MOU instead; but that was the same year no Ute students got that award money.

U. says it’s ‘doing better’ than expected

The University of Utah points to the small membership of the Ute Indian Tribe as the reason for the small number of Ute students it has at the school.

Because of the current blood quantum, the tribe’s official enrollment has shrunk over time as folks with less than 100% Ute lineage have kids who are more and more “less Ute.” In the inaugural 2003 agreement, the Ute Tribe wrote that its population was 3,120 members. It is now 2,970.

Martha Macomber, who is not Indigenous, is the educational coordinator at the U. who works with the tribe to implement the MOU. To calculate how well the university is serving the tribe’s youth, she starts with census data on age and educational attainment — but it has a built-in flaw.

The census includes the entire population living within the boundaries of the Ute Tribe’s 4.5 million-acre reservation — and the majority of people living in that defined area are white. The Utes were pushed into northeastern Utah in 1861, onto what has become the second largest American Indian reservation in the country. But the land was opened up by the federal government to parcel sales to settlers, who quickly outnumbered members of the tribe.

Census data indicates roughly 2% to 3% of all reservation residents, including those who are white and Ute, are ages 17 or 18 — or the age of high school seniors. Using the tribe’s tally of enrolled members, Macomber figures then that there are then roughly 70 high school seniors each year who are enrolled Utes.

National census data shows that 35% of the U.S. population, on average, hold a bachelor’s degree, but Macomber looks to the number of people within the reservation’s boundaries who currently do: 14%. She uses that number to determine how many Ute students can be expected to pursue higher education, arriving at 10 seniors who will go to college each year.

Then she cuts it down even further. In Utah, 16% of high school seniors choose to attend the U. Setting aside the potential higher draw created by the university’s agreement with the tribe, she uses that same percentage to decide roughly one or two graduating Ute seniors will decide to go to the U. each year.

Macomber figures that one or two is what the U. can reasonably expect to enroll. “And we’re doing better than that,” she said.

When she started in her position in 2016, she said, the U. enrolled about one student every other year; now, she says, one to three enroll each year, counting both enrolled and self-identified Utes, for roughly 10 total at the school at any time.

The university’s overall American Indian/Alaska Native population is 132 students, the smallest of any racial/ethnic group on campus; Navajo, or Diné, students are the largest share of that, according to the U.

Macomber’s assertions provide the most specific recent public estimate of how many Ute students attend the U. — and they’re all that the Utes or the public can know on that point.

The school will not release any exact enrollment figures, saying that the number of Ute students is so small that it would risk identifying those individuals and breaking federal student privacy laws.

But Hagood, the senior associate vice president for academic affairs, also said the school doesn’t formally track Ute students — not how many apply, or are admitted, or attend, or graduate, or drop out. Under the MOU, the U. doesn’t have to track or improve performance on any metric.

Cuch takes issue with the low expectations set by Macomber’s calculations. He believes the university should be working to increase college attendance by the tribe’s kids — not settling for matching the percentage of those living on the reservation who currently have a bachelor’s degree.

Ute kids should be achieving more, Cuch said, because of the U.’s interventions in K-12 that are supposed to help them. And more high school seniors should be choosing the U. — or be encouraged to choose the U. — because of the partnership, he said.

“It means a lot,” Mart added, “when someone actually believes in these kids.”

Is the U. fulfilling its K-12 promises?

Matoskah Duncan graduated this spring from Uintah High School, just off the reservation, at a ceremony where his graduation gown flapped in the hot desert wind.

It was a proud accomplishment for the 19-year-old Ute. But he isn’t sure what he’s going to do next. He knows his grandma wants him to go to college. “You’ve got to go,” he says she tells him over and over. “You’ve just got to.”

Over the summer, his family encouraged him to attend the Indigenous storytelling camp that the University of Utah hosts annually. Its goal is to engage Native students with art, Macomber said, showing them different ways of telling their tribe’s legends. About 90 kids from middle school and high school, including recent graduates like Duncan, attended this June.

Duncan beamed over the colorful zine he made about Ute traditions. He hadn’t really pictured himself at a university. But here he was, on campus, creating something. Now, he says, he wishes he’d heard about this event sooner.

“It makes me wonder,” Duncan said. Would he have applied to the U.? Is it too late? Why hadn’t he heard about the Ute scholarship?

Under the agreement with the tribe, the U.’s efforts to support Ute students are supposed to start well before college to encourage students to pursue higher education. While Cuch appreciates things like the storytelling event, he said, if more Ute children like Duncan are not going to college, it’s because the U.’s work on those promises is falling short, not because the students aren’t capable.

The former tribal education director — and former director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs — said K-12 support has always been the baseline request from the tribe in exchange for using its name. The Utes want their children to succeed, he said, and they know that must begin early with education.

The original 2003 document says the agreement’s hope is “to matriculate greater numbers of competent and experienced Ute Indian scientists, engineers, technicians and business professionals.” That starts with recognizing, it says, that “the talent of Ute Indian students has previously been underdeveloped in educational institutions,” starting with public elementary and secondary schools.

The 2020 document includes an updated line that the university pledges to actively engage with both students and parents with “the goal of increasing college attendance.” Concerned that enough wasn’t being done, the tribe’s leaders also negotiated for the U. to begin providing $100,000 a year so the Utes can work directly with their younger students — providing tutors, mentoring and after-school programs.

The U. says it also spends additional money to support the Utes through sponsorships and “external investments,” like contributing to tribal golf tournaments. This academic year, the school anticipates designating another $75,000 through those other channels.

Without early help and encouragement in K-12, though, Cuch said, the scholarships at the U. don’t really matter. “Our kids are not being prepared in the public schools for collegiate work, so oftentimes money appropriated from scholarships results in a scholarship for one year and the student drops out.”

Cuch points to how the two public school districts that cover the Uintah and Ouray Reservation are serving Ute students. About 90% of all Ute students in both districts did not meet proficiency in year-end exams for reading and writing in 2022. That means 10% — or 1 in 10 — were on grade level for the subject. And the scores for math were worse.

Most Ute kids who graduate high school don’t have a GPA that meets the U.’s average 3.5 GPA for students accepted (though admission is not solely based on grades). The numbers have long looked that way, which tribal leaders say is a vestige of the two federal boarding schools that operated on the reservation for decades.

Progress, Macomber said, isn’t going to be immediate. She points to particular efforts at Eagle View Elementary, long the only school in either Uintah or Duchesne school districts that has a majority of Ute students. Principal Chris Jones testified before the Utah Legislature last year that test scores have improved in recent years with concerted attention.

What is learned there, the U. said, will be implemented with Ute children across the reservation. Under the MOU, the U.’s support for K-12 also includes summer youth programs, including a STEM-specific camp.

Macomber says most of her work as a tribal liaison between the U. and the Utes is focused on college access. She regularly visits the reservation, riding school buses, getting to know students, talking and listening.

It’s possible that the U.’s advertising for college application and financial aid events isn’t reaching everyone — but students and families also have to choose to engage, Macomber said. She can’t force that, she said, just like she won’t try to force Ute students to go to the U.

“Where’s the separation between that and boarding schools?” Macomber said. “It’s not meant to be an intervention. It’s meant to be a collaboration.”

‘Otherwise invisible’

Donovan Loneman Jr. graduated from Union High School this summer — the same school that the original group of 11 Ute students graduated from before going to the U. in 1951.

He plans to follow in their footsteps, just not yet. He’s going to join the Marines first. Then he hopes to go to the U., maybe as a walk-on to the football team.

But Loneman has already felt welcomed by the university — thanks to another aspect of the MOU, put in place in 2014. Since eighth grade, he’s danced in the Ute Proud performance, scheduled each year as the halftime show at both a football and a basketball game to showcase the tribe’s heritage.

He looks forward to it, counting down the days once the fall season starts. It’s a way, Loneman says, to show fans where the team’s Utes’ name comes from, where the state’s name comes from, where he comes from.

Fans are also instructed on appropriate behavior at games, such as not wearing red face paint or headdresses. And all students entering the U. are taught the tribe’s history, an addition in the 2020 MOU.

The U. also has notably set up the tribe with its own trademark. The university still holds the more lucrative ones, but it has paid to register and maintain “Ute Proud” for the tribe, so the Utes get any royalties from that.

It’s not much financially — collecting a total of $1,464 so far this year — but it’s a celebration of culture. Cuch knows that. He recognizes there are parts of the MOU that can’t be calculated, that don’t have a price tag.

“One reason we support it is if it weren’t for that, there would be no other landmark that the tribe existed. We are otherwise invisible in the state,” Cuch said during MOU negotiations in 2014.

Bryan Hubain, the associate vice president for student development and success at the U., said the MOU has gotten “a lot more balanced” with time. And current negotiations, he said, will continue that. Those started last month and will continue into next year.

“In my experience at different schools, that balance doesn’t exist,” Hubain said. “We’re looking at a very long game.”

But even in the MOU isn’t about money, if it’s not a one-to-one comparison with how much the U. makes and how much it’s spending on Ute education, the dilemma remains for Cuch:

For the school, the agreement is about using a name that gives it a unique identity. For him, it’s about the future of his tribe, the success of its children.