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- Creators: Rex, Tom R.
- Creators: Zah, Peterson
The experiences Peterson Zah touches on in this interview include his early encounters with traders as a young child in the 1940s, his work at the DNA People’s Legal Services program in the late 1960s, and his involvement in the non-profit organization Southwest Indian Development Inc. in the 1970s and 1980s. Zah focuses on the topic of traders and trading posts on the Navajo Nation. He discusses the growing problems created by unfair traders and how his collaboration with nine Navajo college students to create Southwest Indian Development Inc. allowed for things to change for the better. Zah recalls the dedication of the organization to provide research and compelling reports to the Trading Post Committee of the Navajo tribal council and the Bureau of Indian Affairs in order to amend the trading issues. He also discusses the hearing that the Federal Trade Commission conducted once the Southwest Indian Development Inc. requested their presence after being brushed off by the Navajo tribal council and the BIA. The interview concludes with Zah explaining the role that the DNA People’s Legal Services played in the whole trader controversy and how the actions of the Southwest Indian Development Inc. allowed for shopping centers and post offices to replace shady traders and trading posts.
In this interview, Peterson Zah discusses various trust funds and how the settlement from a 1980’s court case against the Navajo Nation paved the way for greater growth and opportunity. Zah highlights key points in the taxation case, how the settlement money was used, and the issues that arose in trying to allot the funds in a fair way that appeased the whole Navajo community. Some of the trust funds that benefitted from the settlement were the Nation Building Fund, the Navajo Tribal Scholarship program, and the Land Acquisition Fund. Zah goes into detail about the permanent fund, briefly discusses methods of income, such as casinos, and creates a dialog about economic conditions on the reservation. Also brought up in the interview are the changing social conditions of the Navajo, especially as more people move off the reservation. The Navajo lifestyle is also changing, and Zah gives examples of these changes and explains what is creating the change.
The long-term trend toward lower-quality jobs in the United States continued between 2001 and 2004. Industrial job quality fell 1.6 percent nationally between 2001 and 2004. The decrease in occupational job quality was not quite as great at 0.9 percent. Thus, overall U.S. job quality dropped 2.5 percent during the three years, causing the U.S. average wage to be 2.5 percent less than it otherwise would have been. Arizona’s job quality fell between 2001 and 2004 at a pace worse than the national average. Relative to the national average, the industrial and occupational job mixes each slipped a bit more than 0.3 percent during the three years, for an overall decline of 0.7 percent. In Arizona, job quality in 2004 was 2.0 percent below the national average, but Arizona ranked 23rd among all states.
The best way to evaluate job quality would be to analyze a dataset that presents both occupational and industrial data, but the only dataset of this nature available by state comes from the decennial census. It is severely limited by small sample size, the latest data are for 1999, and the 1999 data are not consistent with the 1989 data. Thus, the initial work by the Seidman Institute on job quality ("Job Quality in Arizona", March 2005, presented data on Arizona job quality from several sources of either industrial or occupational data. "Job Quality in Arizona Compared to All States" is an extension of the March 2005 report. Arizona’s job quality in the latest year and its change over time is compared to the national average and is ranked among the 51 “states” (including the District of Columbia).
Maricopa County has experienced remarkable population growth for decades, and will continue to do so. But while expanding metro areas tend to pay close attention to physical infrastructure—diligently budgeting for roads, sewers, schools and the like—there is often a relative lack of attention to meeting the future demands for human services. Relying on the expertise from throughout the College of Public Programs, this report analyzes 12 critically important topics, including children and families, poverty, substance abuse, and Latinos.