The Nez Perc (; autonym in Nez Perce language: Nimipuu, meaning "we, the people") are an Indigenous people of the Plateau who are presumed to have lived on the Columbia River Plateau in the Pacific Northwest region for at least 11,500 years.Members of the Sahaptin language group, the Nimipuu were the dominant people of the Columbia Plateau for much of that time, especially after acquiring the horses that led them to breed the appaloosa horse in the 18th century.

Prior to first contact with European colonial people the Nimiipuu were economically and culturally influential in trade and war, interacting with other indigenous nations in a vast network from the western shores of Oregon and Washington, the high plains of Montana, and the northern Great Basin in southern Idaho and northern Nevada.French explorers and trappers indiscriminately used and popularized the name "Nez Perc" for the Nimipuu and nearby Chinook. The name translates as "pierced nose", but only the Chinook used that form of body modification.Cut off from most of their horticultural sites throughout the Camas Prairie by an 1863 treaty (subsequently known as the "Thief Treaty" or "Steal Treaty" among the Nimiipuu), confinement to reservations in Idaho, Washington and Oklahoma Indian Territory after the Nez Perce War of 1877, and Dawes Act of 1887 land allotments, the Nez Perce remain as a distinct culture and political economic influence within and outside their reservation.As a federally recognized tribe, the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho govern their Native reservation in Idaho through a central government headquartered in Lapwai known as the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee (NPTEC). They are one of five federally recognized tribes in the state of Idaho. The Nez Perce only own 12% of their own reservation and some Nez Perce lease land to farmers or loggers. Today, hatching, harvesting and eating salmon is an important cultural and economic strength of the Nez Perce through full ownership or co-management of various salmon fish hatcheries, such as the Kooskia National Fish Hatchery in Kooskia or the Dworshak National Fish Hatchery in Orofino.Some still speak their traditional language, and the Tribe owns and operates two casinos along the Clearwater River (in Kamiah and east of Lewiston), health clinics, a police force and court, community centers, salmon fisheries, radio station, and other things that promote economic and cultural self-determination.

Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (or Hinmatóowyalahtq̓it in Americanist orthography), popularly known as Chief Joseph, Young Joseph, or Joseph the Younger (March 3, 1840 – September 21, 1904), was a leader of the Wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa) band of Nez Perce, a Native American tribe of the interior Pacific Northwest region of the United States, in the latter half of the 19th century. He succeeded his father Tuekakas (Chief Joseph the Elder) in the early 1870s.

Chief Joseph led his band of Nez Perce during the most tumultuous period in their history, when they were forcibly removed by the United States federal government from their ancestral lands in the Wallowa Valley of northeastern Oregon onto a significantly reduced reservation in the Idaho Territory. A series of violent encounters with white settlers in the spring of 1877 culminated in those Nez Perce who resisted removal, including Joseph's band and an allied band of the Palouse tribe, to flee the United States in an attempt to reach political asylum alongside the Lakota people, who had sought refuge in Canada under the leadership of Sitting Bull.

At least 700 men, women, and children led by Joseph and other Nez Perce chiefs were pursued by the U.S. Army under General Oliver O. Howard in a 1,170-mile (1,900 km) fighting retreat known as the Nez Perce War. The skill with which the Nez Perce fought and the manner in which they conducted themselves in the face of incredible adversity earned them widespread admiration from their military opponents and the American public, and coverage of the war in U.S. newspapers led to popular recognition of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce.

In October 1877, after months of fugitive resistance, most of the surviving remnants of Joseph's band were cornered in northern Montana Territory, just 40 miles (64 km) from the Canadian border. Unable to fight any longer, Chief Joseph surrendered to the Army with the understanding that he and his people would be allowed to return to the reservation in western Idaho. He was instead transported between various forts and reservations on the southern Great Plains before being moved to the Colville Indian Reservation in the state of Washington, where he died in 1904.

Chief Joseph's life remains an iconic event in the history of the American Indian Wars. For his passionate, principled resistance to his tribe's forced removal, Joseph became renowned as both a humanitarian and a peacemaker.