Nimíipuu/Nez Perce Persistence, Settler-Colonization, and the Political Economy of Public Memory: From Time Immemorial to the Future

The sociology of empire tends to center how the material or cultural conditions of the West structure imperialism, anti-imperialist resistance, and the incorporation of “others” into capitalism. This focus, while generating valuable insights, tends to miss opportunities to understand the limits of Western power and how Indigenous Peoples have affected their own lives and colonial social systems. The Nimíipuu/Nez Perce are such a People who, despite settler-colonial genocide, forced assimilation, and capitalist exploitation, remain as a distinct cultural group who affect political economy from their ancestral landbase. How is this possible? Using comparative-historical sociology to analyze the public memory of Nimíipuu/Nez Perce history before and since U.S. colonization, I argue that the Nimíipuu/Nez Perce persist because of their history of affecting and adapting to social change “since a time immemorial.” Triangulating geological, archeological, and ethnographic records with oral traditions and history, I describe the development of an Indigenous Peoples lifeworld that institutionalized robust and adaptive responses to social and ecological changes on the Southern (Columbia) Plateau. The U.S. may have destroyed the Indigenous lifeworld of the Plateau, but its legacies live in the Peoples who practice their ancient lifeways that provide them with material and immaterial resources that capitalism cannot. I illustrate how Nimíipuu/Nez Perce have 1) used and adapted these ancient lifeways to survive settler-colonization, genocide, forced assimilation, and capitalist exploitation, and 2) how whiteness on the Plateau has responded to Nimíipuu/Nez Perce persistence and influence in political economy