About Reef's Golf Course Development

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Reef Capital Partners, a non-Indian private equity firm, along with Black Desert, a developer, plans to use 1,250 acres of Shivwits sacred land atop our ancestral burial grounds to build three 18-hole golf courses, a practice course, airport, clubhouse, and other luxury amenities for its ultra-high-net-worth resort guests.

The site plan shows how massive the scope and scale of the development is, with four golf courses, an airport for private luxury jets, and upscale resort housing and facilities, all of which will be placed on our most sacred and valuable land at the foot of the Red Mountain. 

The virgin, uncontaminated landscape will be decimated by golf courses and chemicals, and an intact, vital ecosystem of native trees, plants, and desert creatures inalterably damaged.
 

In the middle worst drought in Utah since the Middle Ages and with Colorado river water running dry and downstream communities imperiled, Reef's plans appear to circumvent Washington County's 'no new golf courses' in the Mojave Desert rule by using most of Shivwits Band of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah's extremely valuable water to drench its parched golf courses with most of our treaty-assured water rights for the next 99 years.  

Please see our sections on the Environmental Impact & Water Resources for more information.

The Shivwits people have not been allowed to vote on a massive resort development deal central to our land, our lives, our future, our children's future and that of our grandchildren. 

Reef Capital Partners and Black Desert met with members of our Band Council far from the reservation to secretly solidify agreements for a mega golf course resort development greenlighting Reef's lease of much our sacred land and nearly all of our invaluable water rights for the next 99 years

We've asked for transparency and honesty and neither has occurred. Our Band Council leaders have admitted in public that they lied to our people at Band meetings, telling band members that no development agreements had been signed when in fact they had been. We're left to wonder: If this Black Desert/Reef development deal is such a good deal for our people, why can't we see it?  Why won't they tell us what's in it? Why can't we vote on it? And who really benefits? One thing is certain: It sure isn't the Shivwits people. 

The Shivwits Band Council has repeatedly violated the Southern Paiute Constitution and Bylaws and disregarded the will of our people. They even ousted our newly elected Band Chairman who ran for office on issues including our right to vote, opposing Band Council corruption, and stopping Reef's harmful development. Now, without asking tribal members, the remaining members of the band council are trying to unilaterally secede from the Southern Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, all so they can move forward with Reef's massive resort, land takeover, and water rights steal.  

Please see Groups Opposing Resort for more information on this discriminatory legislation. And see Just the Facts for more info on the misinformation retailed by representatives of Reef/Black Desert & the Council.

Reef Capital/Black Desert has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay lawyers, lobbyists, and legislators to attempt to pass an Act of Congress which we didn't want or need, and which would have transferred our legal rights to Utah and removed our federal right to vote on Reef's resort. Fortunately, thanks to Senator John Curtis and the US Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, that legislation is now on hold. Members of the Red Mountain Land Preservers personally visited the Senate in DC in June of 2026 to stop the bill and were told by Senate staff that our visit “made all the difference,” the Black Desert/Reef bill is “dead in the water,” and if a similar bill reappears in the next Congress, Senator Curtis will oppose it. 

Representatives of Reef/Black Desert, including their paid lobbyist, and our band council told Congress the Shivwits people needed the legislation for economic opportunities. That’s just not true. We have a whole host of better options for economic opportunity, none of which have such enormous or permanent ill effects. Why tie up our most valuable land and all our water rights in one bad development deal which destroys our reservation, desecrates our sacred spaces, and divides our tribe? Besides, our water will exponentially increase in value over the next century, especially in the parched, drought-afflicted Southwest.  

We favor economic opportunity and reasoned, sustainable development on our reservation. We neither want nor need Reef's destructive development. What we want is the right to vote and what we need is to have our voices heard and our choices respected.