In 2020, the Native American Voting Rights Coalition published “Obstacles at Every Turn: Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters” as a compilation of the historic and current inequality of voting rights in Indian Country. Starting in 2015, the coalition conducted field hearings across the continental United States and Alaska to develop a more complete understanding of how Native Americans face unique challenges in registering to vote, casting votes, and exercising political power. Although it's commonly understood that voting is easier to do now than ever before, the hearings revealed this to be untrue for many Native Americans. The report discovered a multitude of factors that prohibit equal political participation, including but not limited to geographical isolation, poor infrastructure, technological barriers, language, low levels of education, depressed socioeconomic conditions, voter identification requirements, unequal access to in-person voter registration, lack of pre-election information, cultural or political isolation, and voter dilution.1These current obstacles to suffrage are tied up in a long history of federal and state policies limiting the political rights of Native Americans and the sovereignty of tribal nations. The United States is home to 574 federally recognized American Indian tribes.2 As domestic dependent nations, they exercise criminal and civic jurisdiction, facilitate services to tribal citizens, and maintain government-to-government relationships with the United States.3 Although this right to sovereignty predates European settlement and does not uniquely derive from the federal government, centuries of history have dramatically impacted the means by which Indigenous nations can establish, protect, and maintain self-rule. Policies such as allotment, forced assimilation, and termination help to explain the long delay many tribal people experienced before exercising the franchise and the persistent obstacles to voting that they continue to face. This is true in Utah, the last state in the union to lift voting restrictions for Native Americans.The belated right to vote for Utah Native Americans was more than a function of discrimination and racism, although these were at work in the creation and administration of federal and state policy concerning tribal peoples. Decentralizing their racist roots is not an apology for these policies, but focusing historically on how, why, and for whom these policies existed promotes more holistic understandings of Native American voter suppression. For instance, many popular sources of historical information attest with varying degrees of accuracy to the fact that Utah was the last state in the union to guarantee the right to vote to Native Americans. Such sources mention key events of the history, such as Allen v. Merrell, but focus little on how federal policy directly impacted Native American voting rights in the state.4This analysis contributes to the scholarly literature on Native American voting rights by more explicitly highlighting how shifts in federal policy were linked to suffrage in Utah.5 Specifically, attention to the policies of allotment and termination furthers historical interpretation of Allen v. Merrell (1956), a significant case in which the Utah Supreme Court ruled against universal American Indian suffrage. After midcentury, federal policy partially worked in reverse, allowing American Indians an opportunity to leverage it in favor of voting rights. Paradoxically, this happened around the time of Allen v. Merrell, when termination influenced Utah legislators to reconsider the state's statute prohibiting residents of reservations from voting. In southern Utah, Native Americans used federal policy to secure voting rights in San Juan County, where many additional barriers to voting remain today. American Indians are unique in the American political system, as has been their path to voting rights. Examining the layers that make this the case is informative and a first step to a more nuanced interpretation of Native American civil liberties in a pluralistic society.Utah became a state during an era when American Indian reservations across the country were reduced in size and subject to heavy federal administration. Under the General Allotment (Dawes) Act of 1887 and continuing until the Great Depression, federal policy makers worked to put tribal peoples on the path of American citizenship through policies of assimilation. These policies eliminated surplus land from reservations, created boarding schools, shifted economic practices away from the community toward individualism, regulated tribal social life and law, and offered citizenship for individuals who were willing to abandon tribal affiliations.6 Undergirding these aims was an ideology that defined Native American traditional cultures as burdensome to the republic and antithetical to American society. Philanthropists and politicians alike viewed tribal traditionalism as a limitation that prevented Native people from realizing the “progress” of civilization.7 Allotment, as this era came to be known, laid the groundwork for the disenfranchisement of Native Americans by drawing attention to federal and state jurisdiction over land and peoples. Although reservations were federal lands, outside state jurisdiction, decades of allotment and assimilationist policies blurred the geographic and political lines between state and federal jurisdiction. As federal Indian policy shifted and American Indians became citizens of the United States, Utah's election laws came into conflict with Native American voting rights. Allotment is not just background for the history of Native American suffrage in Utah; it directly influenced why American Indians were denied the franchise for decades after statehood and the Indian Citizenship Act.To foster assimilation and reduce the size of reservations, the federal government assumed a paternalistic role over Native American tribes. As a father supposedly teaches his children the values and skills needed to be successful, the government sought to turn Native Americans “away from traditional Indigenous roaming, hunting, and gathering” practices and to make them into individual citizens through “the cessation of communally owned tribal lands.”8 Under the Dawes Act, after a quarter century of farming and proof of adoption of “habits of civilized life,” American Indians could qualify for United States citizenship.9 The federal government distributed allotments based on tribal populations, offering lands to heads of households. Lands leftover were considered surplus and sold to non-Indians, acting as an additional driver of assimilation.10 By the Depression, tribes had collectively lost ninety million acres of land. Some tribes lost upward of 80 percent of their reservation lands—a loss felt economically and socially for generations.11In Utah, allotment greatly affected the Utes of what is now the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.12 It was during this era when many of the modern political, geographic, and ethnic borders of the reservation were first created.13 Allotment-era policies furthered a trend of geographic and cultural displacement among Northern Utes. Although the lands of the Uintah and Uncompahgre reservations were not ideal for large-scale agriculture or ranching, federal policy pressured Utes to become farmers and ranchers anyway. Allotment is remembered by Utes as a period that “contributed to the destruction of Indian culture and tradition.”14 For Utes, concepts such as individual land ownership, fencing, and daily farm work were foreign. While reporting on the progress of allotment, a federal surveyor observed that they preferred to “drift from place-to-place stopping at intervals where the fishing and hunting is good or where their neighbors have plenty to eat.”15 Even after the allotment of their tribal lands, many Utes followed seasonal hunting, fishing, and gathering opportunities. An ongoing trend since the arrival of the first Mormon settlers, traditional practices progressively grew more difficult as competition for resources grew. Ute leaders at the time nearly unanimously opposed allotment and every attempt the US government made to parcel allotments to their people.16Despite their opposition, the Utes could not overcome the broader spectrum of federal policy. On the Uncompahgre Reservation, surveyed for allotment in 1895, only eighty-eight allotments could be made on “almost a completely barren tract of land” in what is now the eastern portion of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.17 The federal government opened the “surplus” land for homesteading in 1898, and in 1906 reservation lands rich in mineral wealth were opened for purchase via executive order.18 Following allotment on the Uncompahgre Reservation, white settlers increased pressure for the same to occur on the Uintah Reservation. By 1905, what is now the western portion of the current reservation, located within Duchesne and Uintah counties, was surveyed and allotted. More so than on the Uncompahgre lands, white homesteaders eagerly sought title to surpluses of reservation land, which was comparatively favorable for agriculture and ranching. Although federal surveyors attempted to gain Ute consent, the commission sent to survey the lands reported that Utes “were unanimous and determined in their opposition to making cession to the government of any of their lands.”19For Ute people, accustomed to traditional lifeways, the pressures of white settlement, allotment, and cultural assimilation into American society presented tremendous difficulties. They did not have experience or equipment to succeed in the highly competitive agricultural market of commercial farming.20 Instead of promoting self-sufficient economic practices, allotment forced Northern Utes to lease or sell thirty thousand acres of agricultural lands to non-Indian residents by 1920. Much of this land was later over-irrigated or overgrazed, leading to more land losses.21 Allotment left Utes on the northern and southern reservations impoverished economically and culturally as they entered the twentieth century.22The allotment period produced political and geographic consequences that would restrict voting rights for many American Indians well into the twentieth century. Given that Utah entered statehood during a period of increased federal management of Native lives and lands, both the state and federal governments were inclined to establish clear jurisdiction in reservation spaces. The Enabling Act (1894) authorizing the people of Utah to join the United States is indicative of the plenary power that the federal government maintained over Native Americans. When referring to Native Americans, the act asserted the federal government's prerogative over their wardship status and established jurisdictional boundaries between Utah and tribal lands.23Section 3.2 of the Enabling Act set the groundwork for Native American disenfranchisement in Utah in two primary ways. First, it reconciled the then-ongoing allotment process of Native lands with non-Native settlement, establishing a clear precedent of federal jurisdiction over American Indian reservations and residents. The act mandates that non-Native Utahns “forever disclaim” the right and title to lands held “by any Indian or Indian tribes” and that “Indian lands shall remain under the absolute jurisdiction and control” of the federal government. Federal jurisdiction remained until the government “extinguished” the rights to Indian lands. Extinguishing, in this instance, is a reference to the surplus reservation lands opened to homesteading after allotment or other acts of Congress that eliminated reservation lands. As passage of the Enabling Act was contemporary to the allotment of the Uncompahgre and Uintah Ute reservations, such a provision upholding federal jurisdiction on Indian lands was necessary to delineate federal and state jurisdiction and facilitate white settlement of surplus lands.Second, Utah's Enabling Act reflects assimilationist aims of federal Indian policy by indicating when the state could consider Native Americans as Utah residents, distinguishing them from other citizens. The wordy section on taxes reflects this sentiment, noting that nothing would prevent the state of Utah from taxing “lands owned or held by any Indian who has severed his tribal relations.” Presumably, this meant Native Americans who abandoned tribal affiliations and acquired the “habits of civilized life” necessary to earn citizenship of the United States. This distinction persisted to impact voting rights even after Native Americans were universally granted citizenship in 1924, as Utah law tied voting eligibly to state residency.The jurisdictional jargon of Utah's Enabling Act appears in other state enabling acts from the time period and was emblematic of a legal “no man's land” that Native Americans found themselves in.24 Citizenship was attainable yet conditioned on the abandonment of tradition, community, and culture. From a national perspective, determining when American Indians were qualified for citizenship was similarly inconsistent: being born within the territorial limits of the United States did not make them citizens, the federal government did. For example, when Oklahoma ceased to be Indian Territory and became a state, the federal government stipulated that American Indians living there were to be granted citizenship and American Indian men the right to vote.25 In 1919 Congress passed a bill granting citizenship and an honorable discharge to every Indigenous person who served in the United States military during World War I. In 1922, the office of Indian Affairs identified eight procedures that permitted Native American access to citizenship.26 Around the time Utah became a state, citizenship for American Indians was possible but exclusively tied to federal policy.In this context, the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act can be seen as a reformative measure enacted to address confusion regarding Native Americans’ place within the legal system. Throughout American history, the United States has recognized inherent sovereignty among Native nations, equating them to foreign countries. The constitution authorizes Congress to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.”27 Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work, who endorsed the bill, claimed the legislation would “bridge the present gap and provide a means whereby an Indian may be given United States citizenship without reference to the question of land tenure or the place of his residence.”28The 1924 Indian Citizenship Act marked the beginning of a shift in federal policy toward limited tribal self-rule. Instead of coercing individual Native Americans to abandon tribal communities, federal policy eased toward recognizing tribes as legitimate, domestic-dependent political entities. A series of federal investigations throughout the 1920s made it abundantly clear that allotment was a failure. The most prominent was the 1928 Meriam Report, which documented the poverty, poor health conditions, meager education, inadequate housing, and significant land loss created by decades of allotment policy. The outcome of these reports influenced the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934, which offered tribes that voted to adopt it opportunities to create federally recognized tribal governments with powers of limited self-rule. This permitted tribal nations to hire attorneys, pursue economic development, regulate resources, adopt constitutions, determine criteria for tribal citizenship, and generally gain more influence over reservation lands. Although tribes were still very much subjects of the federal government—as all tribal constitutions and bylaws were subject to federal approval—the IRA was a step toward limited self-governance. The legislation was not without flaws, however, as it supplanted traditional leadership through the creation of IRA-approved governments, creating new internal tribal conflicts.29Some tribal nations in Utah resisted the reforms introduced by IRA, despite the legislation's limited benefits. The Navajo Nation, for example, proposed the creation of a government that did not meet certain standards of the IRA. Eventually the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) worked with other tribal members to form a Navajo Business Council that survived and evolved into the present Navajo Nation government.30 Distrustful of the federal government, Northern and Southern Utes were initially opposed to or uninterested in forming IRA governments. However, pressure from federal agents resulted in votes of acceptance. Utes of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation retained their preexisting Business Committee as their IRA government. Composed of two representatives from each of the three prominent Ute bands, the Business Committee consisted of members who were more acculturated into mainstream American society. This increased internal division within the tribal government, which worsened over the next few decades.31 Both of the federally recognized Goshute nations (the Skull Valley Band of Goshute and Confederated Tribes of Goshute) created governments under the IRA framework, although their structures differed from each other.32 Two of the five Paiute bands of Utah voted to accept the IRA.33Briefly mentioning the IRA is germane to the history of Native American voting rights because it demonstrates the difficulty of defining Indian. The term is used to convey ethnological and political meaning, the latter paramount to Native American civil rights. Ethnically, the term refers to someone with Indigenous ancestors who is considered to be Native American in their community. Politically, the term is complicated, as it often relates to the distribution of federal and tribal services and political status.34 An individual may be fully or ethnically Indigenous, but if they are not a member of a federally recognized tribe, they do not have the same political experience as an enrolled tribal member. The relevancy to voting rights is that many Utah Native Americans, particularly those who live on reservations, are dual citizens of the United States and of a sovereign American Indian tribe.By the mid twentieth century, approximately 2,800 to 3,700 Indigenous men, women, and children within the state of Utah lived on reservations. The lack of precision in the count may be attributed, in part, to the arbitrary political definition of Indian at the time. The 1950 Census categories included “full-blood Indians,” “persons of any degree of mixed blood enrolled at an Indian agency or reservation,” “persons of one-fourth or more Indian blood,” and “persons regarded as ‘Indians’ in the community of residence.”35 When the issue of voting rights made it to the Utah Supreme Court in 1956, interpretations of who was politically Indian, along with notions of tribal sovereignty, would impact how the court assessed suffrage.By midcentury all American Indians were considered United States citizens by birthright, were a generation removed from forced relocation and assimilation, could organize federally recognized tribal governments, and possessed more legal means of advocacy: yet voting rights remained the prerogative of states. American Indian citizenship on a national level was unquestionable, but the lawmakers who passed the Indian Citizenship Act did not intend to universally enfranchise Indigenous voters.36 Many western states, unwilling to recognize Natives as eligible voters, maintained legal barriers to the vote. Idaho, California, and New Mexico denied the franchise to “Indians not taxed.” These states argued that because Native Americans were exempt from state property taxes, they did not merit the right to vote. A 1903 law passed in South Dakota barred Native Americans “maintaining tribal relations” from voting or holding public office.37 Until 1946 the state of Arizona withheld the franchise from any person “under guardianship.”38 Across the West, the legacy of colonialism created legal precedent that explicitly considered Native Americans as distinctly different from other US citizens. This legal otherness was used to justify the denial of their voting rights. In Utah, this occurred primarily among American Indians living on reservations.In 1956, Preston Allen, a Whiteriver Ute from Altonah, Utah, applied for an absentee ballot. Having participated in the previous general election as a registered voter, Allen was surprised to learn from the Duchesne County clerk's office that his request was denied. County clerk Porter L. Merrell explained the decision was made because Allen lived “on an Indian reservation and did not establish a residence in any other precinct in the state of Utah” prior to the election.39 Justifiably confused, Allen sued on behalf of himself and others in the same situation with the assistance of the Ute Tribal Committee and National Congress of American Indians legal counsel.The county had denied Allen the vote based on a recent interpretation of an old Utah statute that established voting prerequisites. In 1897, the Utah legislature, seeking to delineate between state and federal spaces as mandated in the Enabling Act, adopted a statute that stated “any person living upon any Indian or military reservation shall not be deemed a resident of Utah within the meaning of this chapter, unless such person had acquired a residence in some county in Utah prior to taking up his residence upon such Indian or military reservation.”40 Before Allen was denied his ballot, Utah Attorney General E. R. Callister was asked to clarify the standing of the statute earlier in 1956. Callister interpreted it rigidly: “Indians who live on the reservations are not entitled to vote in Utah and a Board of County Commissioners has no duty to provide them with voting facilities. Indians living off the reservation may, of course, register and vote in the voting district in which they reside, the same as any other citizen.”41 With this interpretation, Callister ordered county clerks to deny voter registration to residents of reservations.42 Although residents of reservations who did not belong to a tribe or were not Native American would have been denied the vote under the same interpretation, these same individuals would have had an easier time establishing residency elsewhere compared to their Native American counterparts.In Utah, as in other western states, determining how Native Americans fit into the eligible voting population was a matter of interpretation. In fact, the 1897 statute had been previously interpreted differently in favor of the right of reservation residents to the vote. In 1940, the Attorney General's office opined that the state's residency definition “should be resolved in favor of granting the franchise to the citizens residing in the Uintah Reservation rather than denying the same.” Unlike the Attorney General's 1956 opinion, this interpretation recognized that historical circumstances had sufficiently changed since the late nineteenth century. Assistant Attorney General Grover A. Giles argued in 1940 that Utah's code “contemplated a closed reservation,” noting “the unallotted lands were thrown open to entry, voting precincts have been established and state, county and school taxes have been levied and collected.” Elaborating, he noted how “the attitude of the Government towards the Indians themselves with relation to voting privileges has changed materially since the Utah statute in question was created.”43Due to this opinion, Native Americans were legally able to vote from 1940 to 1956, but the original 1897 statute remained on the books. This was how Preston Allen and other residents of reservations were able to vote prior to Allen v. Merrell. The prior access to the vote was well-known at the time, and the reemergence of the issue was “a serious bone of contention among the people of Uintah County.”44 As more non-Indigenous residents moved on or near reservations, the towns and cities that formed in their wake fell under state administration. The boundaries between tribal land, federal land, and state land grew increasingly complex.With Callister's 1956 interpretation against granting reservation residents the vote, Utah was the only state that did not guarantee that right to Native Americans. Allen's attorneys and the Utah press knew this to be the case at the time.45 Although this prohibition was not explicitly based on race or ethnicity, the denial of voting rights to reservation residents disproportionally disenfranchised Native Americans. Attorneys representing Allen argued that the Uintah and Ouray Reservation was indeed within the territorial and jurisdictional limits of Utah and that denying residents suffrage was a violation of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. The defense argued that the statute and the interpretation of such could not have been discriminatory, because individuals who were not American Indians living on reservations (or military bases) would have also needed to establish residency elsewhere in Utah to qualify to vote. Ostensibly, the central tension was not regarding the right to vote but rather how the residency law should be interpreted. The court ultimately ruled against Allen in December 1956, basing its decision on three main reasons: tribal sovereignty, the high degree of control the federal government had over American Indian affairs, and taxes.46The Allen decision stated that because Native Americans had “extremely limited” interactions with the state government, they had “much less interest in or concern with [the state government] than do other citizens.” The court opined that American Indians on reservations did not live “in communities, but in individual dwellings or hogans remotely isolated from others and from contact with the outside world” and that they were “neither acquainted with the processes of government” nor had “much concern with services and regulations pertaining to sanitation, business, licensing, school facilities, law enforcement and other functions carried on by the county and state governments.” Native Americans, according to the court, were “distinctly different” in that they “enjoy the benefits of [federal] governmental services without bearing commensurate tax burden and are not as conversant with nor as interested in government as other citizens.” Therefore, the court did “not see how it can be said with any degree of certainty that the statute is a denial of the right to vote on account of race, nor that it is so unreasonable or arbitrary that it is in clear conflict with the nondiscrimination and equal protection clauses of the Federal Constitution or of the Constitution of this state.”47Some legal experts at the time disagreed with the court's ruling. Shortly after the decision, an article in the Utah Law Review articulated the flaws in the court's interpretation. Like the 1940 Assistant Attorney General opinion, the author viewed the 1897 residency statute as outdated. The article speculated that the “motive for adoption” of the statute was likely due to “friction” between Utah and the federal government. The author noted that at statehood Native Americans were not granted citizenship by birthright. Referencing subsequent changes in federal policy, the author questioned how the statute applied to Native Americans, who were now citizens of not only the United States but also of the state in which they resided. The article's author also disagreed with the court's argument regarding taxes. American Indians residing on reservations did not have to pay state property taxes and many other state taxes, but they did pay sales tax to the state when they purchased personal property.48Preston Allen immediately appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court, and the court quickly accepted. However, the court never heard the case, because the Utah State Legislature voted unanimously only a little over a month after the ruling to amend the residency statute to allow reservation residents to vote.49 It is unlikely that the state would have won its case before the US Supreme Court, which possibly explains why the legislature hastily changed its statute.50In addition to recognizing the case's likely failure, the Utah legislature amended its discriminatory residency statute for another reason: to embrace a new shift in federal American Indian policy that offered a simple corrective to the oddities of Native American political integration. Although Allen v. Merrell revolved around residency and the interpretation of such, the case was entangled with broader shifts in federal policy. Contextualizing the case within the ideology of federal policy known as “termination” further explains the conditions in which the Native Americans of Utah belatedly secured the vote.Federal Indian policy from 1953 to the mid-1960s is collectively called “termination,” as it featured a wave of policy makers and bureaucrats who sought to end the unique relationship of Native nations with the government and dramatically change how Native Americans fit within the body politic. This shift in policy was popular among conservative lawmakers and bureaucrats, many resolved to limit federal spending on programs they considered ineffective in favor of those that promoted individualism and capitalism.51 Whereas allotment represented a long-term federal effort to uplift Native peoples into citizenship and develop tribal lands economically, termination attempted to uplift them by freeing them from federal paternalism and political obscurity. Specifically, termination was meant to “make the Indians within the territorial limits of the United States subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicab