Mark Maryboy

Mark Maryboy (born December 10, 1955) is a retired American politician. He represented San Juan County, Utah as a County Commissioner, serving three terms, and formerly served on the Navajo Nation Council Delegate for the Utah Navajo Section. He is a member of the Navajo tribe Nation and the brother of Kenneth Maryboy, who currently serves on the Navajo Nation Council Delegate.

Maryboy was first elected as the San Juan County, Utah, Commissioner for District Three in 1986, becoming the first Native American to be elected County Commissioner in Utah's history.

In 2013, Maryboy, in collaboration with Rebecca M. Benally and a group of protesters from the Aneth Chapter, organized a three-day blockade of the main ExxonMobil corporate office in Aneth, Utah.

Biography Mark Maryboy was born on December 10, 1955, at St. Christopher's Mission near Bluff, Utah. He was the fifth of eight children and grew up on a Navajo Nation reservation living in a traditional Navajo Hogan. Maryboy attended BIA boarding schools in both Kayenta and Aneth.

After Maryboy graduated from San Juan High School in Blanding, Utah, He attended the University of Utah, where he majored in history and minored in business. He graduated in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts. He often clashed with former commissioner Calvin Black, a Republican, member, during commission meetings. He was appointed to serve on the Utah Advisory Committee for the United States Commission on Civil Rights in 1993. In 1994, President Clinton appointed him to serve on the National Advisory Council on Indian Education.

In April 2006, Navajo Nation Council Speaker Lawrence T. Morgan was charged with criminal battery after allegedly striking Council Delegate Mark Maryboy in the chest. The incident occurred after Maryboy complained that Morgan did not help him introduce legislation that had been skipped earlier that day. Maryboy and the Utah Navajo Commission urged the Navajo Nation to reassert Colorado River water claims the tribe waived in the late 1960s to help facilitate a power plant near Page, Arizona. In 2020, the Senate unanimously passed the Utah Navajo Water Rights Settlement Act, which would recognize the Navajo's right to of water from the Colorado River.

According to the Utah Navajo Commission, the tribe could claim between one and 2,000,000 acre-feet (2.5 km3) of Colorado River water. The council waived at least a portion of its rights in a 1968 agreement with the federal government and the Salt River Project, which planned to build a coal-fired power plant near Page. The protest was composed of local Navajo people. and supported tribal legislation that allows the agency to keep its profits rather than return them to Window Rock.