Peterson Zah, a monumental Navajo Nation leader who guided the tribe through a politically tumultuous era and worked tirelessly to correct wrongdoings against Native Americans, has died. He was 85.
Zah was the first president elected on the Navajo Nation — the largest tribal reservation in the— in 1990 after the government was restructured into three branches to prevent power from being concentrated in the chairman’s office. At the time, the tribe was reeling from a deadly riot incited by Zah’s political rival, former Chairman Peter MacDonald, a year earlier.
Zah was born in December 1937 in remote Low Mountain, a section of the reservation embroiled in a decades-long land dispute with the neighboring Hopi Tribe that resulted in the relocation of thousands of Navajos and hundreds of Hopis. He attended boarding school, graduating from the Phoenix Indian School, and rejected notions that he wasn’t suited for college, Eberhard said.on a basketball scholarship where he earned a degree in education.
Zah sometimes was referred to as the Native American Robert Kennedy because of his charisma, ideas and ability to get things done, including lobbying federal officials to ensure Native Americans could use peyote as a religious sacrament, his longtime friend Charles Wilkinson said last year. "It’s hard for me to prioritize in that order," he said. "It’s something I enjoyed doing all my life. People have passion, we’re born with that, plus a purpose in life."
"It’s thousands upon thousands of Native students not only from Navajo who he encouraged to stay in school, seek advanced degrees and was available to counsel when they hit the rough spots," said Eberhard, who worked for Zah while he was chairman. "He completely altered the way Arizona State University works with Native students."
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