Nimiipuu/Nez Perce persistence: From time immemorial to the future

Hundreds of millions of Indigenous People persist worldwide as members of distinct socio-political groups, affecting political economy from their ancestral land bases. Dominant Western social science tends to frame the persistence of Indigenous Peoples in capitalism as a paradox of irreconcilable times and ways of life, partially because of the analytical tools available to make sense of social life. Analyzing 120 publications from the Nimiipuu/Nez Perce about their social worlds before and since Western imperialism, I name and critique imperial chronology as a research orientation that reifies abstract imperial time-measuring concepts and substitutes symbolism for human behavior. According to Nimiipuu/Nez Perce publications, they persist because they have been adapting inventively to new conditions in their homeland since “a time immemorial.” In this paper, I show how Nimiipuu/Nez Perce consciously coordinate changes and tradition vis-à-vis their ancestral lifeways of storytelling, husbandry, and community to produce (im)material resources that they consider necessary.