Monday, January 01, 2007

Arthur James Welmas, who served as chairman of the Cabazon Band of Mission
Indians when the small tribe won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in
1987 that laid the foundation for the Indian gambling movement, has died. He
was 77. Mr. Welmas, who led the Riverside County tribe for a decade, died of
kidney failure and complications from diabetes Dec. 17 at a hospital in
Escondido, said his wife, Elma. After the Cabazon Indians began offering
high-stakes bingo on their reservation in 1983, local and state officials
repeatedly went to court to stop them. The high court ruling said that
states were not allowed to regulate gambling on reservations. The decision
led to the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which opened the door to
modern Indian gambling. Toehold established ``Had it gone the other way, the
industry would have legally collapsed before it really got a toehold,''
Howard Dickstein, an attorney who represents Indian gambling tribes across
California, told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday. ``You can't overestimate
the impact of that case on what we are seeing now. It led to the political
powers of tribes.'' When Mr. Welmas took over as tribal chairman in 1978,
the Cabazon Band had 23 members and 1,700 acres of barren land near Indio --
and little else.
The first business venture Mr. Welmas oversaw was a tax-free cigarette and
liquor shop that opened in 1979. But when the Supreme Court ruled that
states have a right to collect tax on cigarettes sold to non-Indians on
reservation land, the enterprise closed after a year. `Sovereign immunity'
Next the tribe turned to gambling, opening a room for poker and card games
in 1980. They invoked the same theory of ``sovereign immunity'' -- the idea
that the reservation was beyond the reach of state and local government --
that they had used in establishing the smoke-shop business, a 1982 Times
story reported. Legal troubles quickly began when the casino was raided by
Indio police. Even after the landmark 1987 Supreme Court decision, the tribe
continued to tussle with state authorities over what kinds of gambling could
be offered. That ended in 2000 when a proposition passed that gave tribes
the authority to operate casinos in California. Mr. Welmas was born Dec. 10,
1929, on the Los Coyotes Indian reservation in San Diego County and lived in
nearby Rincon for most of his life. By the 1970s, Mr. Welmas was active in
Indian affairs. He worked in San Diego developing jobs for tribe members and
helping the city coordinate and disseminate public information to American
Indian groups, according to ``Return of the Buffalo: The Story Behind
America's Indian Gaming Explosion'' (1995).