He won an upset victory in 1982 to become tribal chairman. In 1990, after a restructuring, he was the first person elected to the new post of president.
Peterson Zah led the Navajo Nation, the largest tribal reservation in the United States, for four years in the 1980s and then for another four in the ’90s, and who is widely credited with calming internal turmoil and advancing the economic and environmental interests of his tribe.