Former Navajo president Zach dies out of love for the people

FLAGSTAFF, Arizona. Peterson Zach, a monumental Navajo leader who led the tribe through a politically turbulent era and worked tirelessly to right wrongs against Native Americans, has died.

Zach died late Tuesday at a hospital in Fort Defiance, Arizona, after a long illness, his family and tribe announced. He was 85.

Zach was the first president elected from the Navajo Nation — the largest tribal reservation in the US — in 1990 after the government was reorganized into three branches to prevent a concentration of power in the chairman’s office. At the time, the tribe was going through a bloody riot, sparked a year earlier by Zaha’s political rival, former chairman Peter McDonald.

According to his longtime friend Erik Eberhard, Zach vowed to rebuild the tribe, as well as support the family and education by speaking to people in a way that inspires mutual respect. Zach, he said, was just as comfortable in dressing up to represent the Navajo in Washington, D.C. as he was driving his old pickup truck around the reservation and sitting on the ground listening to the people who were fighting.

“People trusted him, they knew he was honest,” Eberhard said on Tuesday.

Zach will be buried on Saturday morning in a private service. A public reception will follow just outside of Window Rock, Arizona. His family expressed their gratitude for the outpouring of love and support they received.

“It’s encouraging to hear from so many people sharing stories about Peterson that bring comfort to the family,” the statement said late Wednesday.

Aspiring politicians from the Navajo Nation and beyond sought Zach’s advice and support. He rode with Hillary Clinton in the Navajo Nation Parade a month before Bill Clinton was elected president. Zach later campaigned for Hillary Clinton in her bid for the presidency.

Over the years, he recorded countless Navajo-language campaign advertisements that aired on the radio, mostly on the Democratic side. But he also befriended Republicans, including the late Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain, whom he supported in the 2000 presidential election as someone capable of working across the aisle.

Zach was born in December 1937 in remote Low Mountain, part of a reservation embroiled in a decades-long land dispute with the neighboring Hopi tribe that resulted in the displacement of thousands of Navajos and hundreds of Hopis. According to Eberhard, he went to boarding school, graduated from the Phoenix Indian School, and rejected the notion that he was unsuitable for college.

Zach attended community college and then Arizona State University on a basketball scholarship, where he earned a degree in education. He went on to teach reservation carpentry and other trades. He later co-founded a federally funded legal advocacy organization that served the Navajo, Hopi, and Apache that still exists today.

Although Zach never held a major elective office, Zach took over as tribal chairman in 1982, campaigning in a beat-up white 1950s International pickup truck that he fixed himself, drove for decades, and became a symbol of his reserved style, said Eberhard. .

Under Zach’s leadership, the tribe established a multi-billion-dollar Permanent Fund in 1985 after winning a lawsuit with Kerr McGee that found the tribe had the right to tax mining companies in an area of ​​27,000 square miles (69,000 square miles). kilometers). booking. All leases for coal, pipelines, oil and gas were renegotiated, increasing payments to the tribe. A portion of this money is added annually to the Permanent Fund.

Former Hopi chairman Ivan Sidney, whose tenure coincided with Zaha’s tenure as chairman, said the two forged a thorny relationship between neighboring tribes over a land dispute. They agreed to meet in person, without lawyers, to figure out how to help their people. Even after their terms ended, they attended tribal inaugurations and other events together.

Zach said, “Let’s get some attention,” Sidney recalled on Wednesday after visiting Zach’s family. “We walked together, sat together and got to know each other.”

Zaha has sometimes been called the Native American Robert Kennedy because of his charisma, ideas and ability to get things done, including lobbying federal officials for Native Americans to use peyote as a religious sacrament, longtime friend Charles Wilkinson said last year.

Zach has also worked to ensure that Native Americans are reflected in federal environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.

Zach told The Associated Press in January 2022 that respecting the differences between people is the key to maintaining a sense of beauty in life and a better world for future generations. He struggled to name what he was most proud of after receiving a lifetime achievement award from an environmental group in Flagstaff.

“It’s hard for me to prioritize in that order,” he said. “This is what I have enjoyed doing all my life. People have a passion, we are born with it, plus a purpose in life.”

Zach said that he could not have done the job alone and paid tribute to the efforts of the team, which always included his wife Rosalind. Throughout his life, he never claimed to be an extraordinary Navajo, just a Navajo with extraordinary experience.

This resonated with students at Arizona State University, where Zach was a Native American liaison under the school’s president for 15 years, which increased the number of Native students and Native alumni. Zach also pushed for colleges and universities to accept Navajo students—whether they graduated from Arizona, New Mexico, or Utah—at the cost of tuition in the state.

“Thousands and thousands of non-Navajo Native students who he encouraged to stay in school, pursue degrees and be available for advice when they ran into difficulties,” said Eberhard, who worked for Zach when he was chairman. “He completely changed the way Arizona State University works with Indigenous students.”

Current Navajo President Buu Nygren said he first interacted with Zach as an ASU student and was struck by Zach’s speech, which he described as quiet and structured yet powerful and vibrant.

“Seeing him on the ASU campus gave me a lot of inspiration,” he said. “Probably I wouldn’t have gone into construction management if he wasn’t so influential at ASU.”

Zach remained active in Navajo politics after he left ASU, as a consultant to other Navajo leaders on issues ranging from education, veterans, and housing.

“He was a good and honest man, a man with a heart,” former Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. said late Tuesday. “And his heart was with his family, with the people, with the youth, and of course with our nation, our culture and our way of life.”