When Time Belongs to the Land: Indigenous Resistances to Capitalist Temporalities

Indigenous Resistances to Capitalist Temporalities

Abstract

This article examines how conceptions of time among the Akwẽ-Xerente people of Salto Kripre village (Tocantins State) and the Mbya Guarani people of Nhanderekoá village (São Paulo State) constitute counter-colonial forms of resistance against the temporal orders imposed by capitalist society. Drawing on an analysis of cultivation practices, hunting, and foodways as expressions of temporal relations within these communities, the article argues that these peoples sustain ways of life rooted in shared time—organized in synchrony with land, natural cycles, and spiritual relationships—countering the Western worldview of linear and production-centered time. In both contexts, time is not treated as a resource to be optimized but as a relational dimension involving humans, non-human beings, and territory. Through personal narratives, the article demonstrates how temporal experience shifts within and beyond the villages, revealing tensions between Indigenous temporalities and capitalist acceleration. Ultimately, the study argues that Indigenous struggles for land are simultaneously struggles for the right to live according to temporalities that resist dispossession and affirm that time can belong to the land.