Bid to Oust Tribal Leader Ends in Defeat : Cabazon Indians: The two dissidents are fined $50,000 each and further penalized after a misconduct hearing stemming from their challenge.

When Arthur Welmas and Linda Streeter Dukic decided to challenge the leadership of the tiny Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, they knew they were taking a calculated risk.

But they never quite realized the extent of their gamble until the conclusion of a 3 1/2-hour misconduct hearing in the main gaming hall of the Cabazon Bingo Palace last week.

Welmas and Dukic, whose recent drive to oust Tribal Chairman John James for alleged mismanagement failed by one vote, were fined $50,000 each. They also were barred from participating in all tribal affairs, including elections, and from receiving any financial benefits from the band for periods of 10 and 20 years, respectively.

The controversy has sparked a debate over the issue of constitutional rights to free speech versus the sovereignty of an Indian tribe.

Cabazon leaders--whose 1,700-acre reservation is located on barren scrubland about 25 miles from Palm Springs--say the pair acted “to the detriment of the band” by organizing a meeting of a majority of its 19 voting members to seek James’ removal.

Welmas, 60, and Dukic, 44, also were accused of damaging the band’s “dignity and integrity” by making critical statements about the leadership to news reporters and by failing to pay for food and beverages at the Bingo Palace’s buffet.

“They say I took some fried zucchini,” says the taciturn Welmas, a former 10-year Cabazon tribal chairman. “It seems funny, but that’s apparently a serious charge to them.”

Participants on both sides agree that much of the evidence at the closed-door hearing consisted of news clippings in which the defendants were quoted as accusing James of mismanaging the band and of serving as a stooge for the Anglo advisers who have overseen its business affairs and lucrative gaming facilities for the last decade.

Dukic, in particular, has called for audits of the receipts of the Cabazon’s gambling halls--just off the 10 Freeway--which include a card casino, a “Watch-N-Wager” off-track horse betting room and a high-stakes bingo parlor.

Eventually, she said, the non-Indian lawyers and businessmen “want to eliminate all the Indians from the land.”

The hearing itself vividly reflected the extent of the outsiders’ control, the dissidents say. Phoenix attorney Glenn Feldman, the band’s longtime legal adviser, served as prosecutor. Joe Preloznik, a lawyer from Wisconsin, served as temporary tribal chairman during the session. Also in attendance was the band’s chief executive officer, Mark Nichols, whose non-Indian family has helped run the tribe’s affairs for more than a decade.

“What is this all about? It’s about my clients criticizing the outsider interests controlling the tribe,” says the defendants’ Los Angeles-based attorney, Barry Fisher. “And it was those people who were chairing the meeting.”

At the conclusion of the hearing, Cabazon Band members, who served as a jury, voted to sanction Dukic by a margin of 10 to 6 and Welmas by a margin of 11 to 5.

Fisher, who says that the charges fly in the face of his clients’ First Amendment rights to free speech, plans to call for a U. S. Bureau of Indian Affairs investigation and says he will seek to appeal the verdict in federal court.

“At a stroke, their link to their land, their history and their traditions have been extirpated,” said Fisher, citing the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968.

However, Virgil Townsend, the BIA’s Southern California superintendent, said Friday that the agency generally refrains from involvement in disputes concerning tribal membership.

“There have been past precedents in which members of tribes have been disenrolled for causing disorder and chaos. In their minds they didn’t, but in the minds of elected leaders, at times, they did,” Townsend said.

Cabazon counsel Feldman said the sanctions constitute an internal matter that cannot be appealed to the state or federal courts. Besides, the First Amendment does not apply on sovereign Indian reservations, said Feldman, who in 1987 won a U. S. Supreme Court ruling on behalf of the Cabazons forbidding states from regulating gambling on Indian reservations.

According to Feldman and Tribal Chairman James, the defendants were punished for the conduct rather than for the mere fact they made public statements.

The band’s articles of association say that all tribal meetings must be called or chaired by the tribal chairman, James said. So, in calling the special meeting to oust him, he said, the defendants broke the band’s rules.

“What they did could be considered reservation-busting or treason in any form of government,” James said. “In the old days, for what the did, they’d have been up a tree.”

While declining to cite dollar figures, James said the outside managers have improved the band’s lot by operating a lucrative gambling hall and by seeking to attract other businesses to the desolate reservation.

James also denied recurring allegations of mob influence in the gaming concession. “We have been fully investigated by the state of California and the FBI,” he said. “If we had done anything, we’d have heard about it.”

When the dissidents called their ouster meeting last April, they had the support of 10 of 19 voting members of the tribe. But at a subsequent session, the majority shifted when five supporters of James--including Welmas’ step-children--were added to the voting rolls.

Welmas claims that the new voters were swayed to back James and his advisers with such promises as free apartment rentals, medical benefits and a stake in the band’s profits.

“They treat them good in order to get their votes,” Welmas said. “It wasn’t a game of chance, that’s for sure.

“If the gambling was shut down everybody would be gone tomorrow,” he said.

Beside losing their voting rights and medical benefits, Welmas and Dukic also were stripped of $35,000 disbursements that each member was paid last month as part of a $1-million settlement for a state highway easement through the reservation.

Now, Welmas says, he is worried that he will be ordered to move his five-bedroom trailer home off the reservation.

“It’s a stacked deck,” the silver-maned former chairman said. “And they’re not going to be satisfied until you’re out of their hair.”