Overview
I am a historian of colonial North America, specializing in the history of indigenous peoples in the Northeast, particularly that of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). I took advantage of my status as a dual citizen of the Canada and the United States to train at what is now Western University in my hometown of London, Ontario, Canada, and completed my doctorate at University of Michigan. My first book, The Edge of the Woods: Iroquoia, 1534-1701 (2010, reissued in paperback in Canada and the USA in 2014) was published with the support of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. I argue that the extensive spatial mobility engaged in by Haudenosaunee people after their first contact with Europeans represented a geographical expression of Haudenosaunee social, political, and economic priorities. I drew on archival and published documents in several languages, archaeological data, published Haudenosaunee oral traditions, and GIS technology to reconstruct the 17th-century Haudenosaunee settlement landscape and the paths of human mobility that built and sustained it. Many of my article-length publications in journals such as Journal of Early American History, Diplomatic History, William and Mary Quarterly, and Recherches Amerindiennes au Quebec are available for consultation at my Academia.edu webpage. My current research interests include Cornell University’s origins in Indigenous dispossession, the impact of the U.S./Canada border on Native American nations, and contemporary Haudenosaunee nation-building initiatives.
At Cornell I am fortunate to reside in close proximity to the people and places I research and write about, and I have also had the privilege to serve as a legal and historical consultant to several Haudenosaunee communities, including most recently the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne and the Six Nations of the Grand River. Since December 2014 I have been qualified to testify as an expert witness in several court cases related to Indigenous rights claims in Canada and my research and testimony contributed to the outcome of a landmark case decided in the Superior Court of Québec in November 2023, R. v. White and Montour.
My teaching at Cornell includes courses such as: Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong: An Introduction to Native American History, the American Revolutionary era and seminars on Early American Cartography; the U.S.-Canada Border; Dispossession, Truth, and Reconciliation; and New World Encounters. In 2011-12 I was a recipient of the Stephen and Margery Russell Award for Distinguished Teaching in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell. In addition to my work on campus I am frequently on the road speaking to secondary educators, town historians, and the general public in venues such as Fort Ticonderoga's National Endowment for the Humanities "Landmarks in American History and Culture Workshops," Johnson Hall State Historic Site, the Ontario County Historical Society, and the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown.
Research Focus
- Indigenous North America (esp. Haudenosaunee)
- Early American History
- Historical Geography
- Race and Ethnicity
- Social
Publications
MONOGRAPH
The Edge of the Woods: Iroquoia, 1534-1701. Michigan State University Press, 2010; paperback edition, University of Manitoba Press, 2014.
PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES
“Confronting Cornell University’s Origins in Indigenous Dispossession,” in Vanessa Holden and Michael Witgen, eds., “Forum: ‘The End of Early America?’” William and Mary Quarterly 81 (January 2024): 123-34.
"The Meaning of Kaswentha and the Two Row Wampum Belt in Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) History: Can Indigenous Oral Tradition be Reconciled with the Documentary Record?" Journal of Early American History 3 (2013): 82-109.
"The Perils and Possibilities of Wartime Neutrality on the Edges of Empires: Iroquois and Acadians between the British and French in North America, 1744-60." (coauthored with Mark P. Robison) Diplomatic History 31 (2007): 167-206.
"After the Mourning Wars: The Iroquois as Allies in Colonial North American Campaigns, 1676-1760." William and Mary Quarterly 64 (2007): 39-82.
BOOK CHAPTERS AND INVITED ESSAYS
"Separate Vessels: Hudson, the Dutch, and the Iroquois." In Jaap Jacobs and Louis Roper, eds., The Worlds of the Seventeenth Century Hudson Valley (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014), 103-33.
"In the Wake of Cartier: The Indigenous Context of Champlain's Activities in the St. Lawrence Valley and Upper Great Lakes, 1550-1635." In Nancy Nahra, ed., When the French Were Here…And They're Still Here: Proceedings of the 2009 Champlain Quadricentennial Conference (Burlington, VT: Champlain College, 2010), 87-115.
"'Onenwahatirighsi Sa Gentho Skaghnughtudigh': Reassessing Iroquois Relations with the Albany Commissioners of Indian Affairs, 1723-1755." In Nancy Rhoden, ed., English Atlantics Revisited: Essays Honouring Professor Ian K. Steele (Montréal, QC, and Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007), 235-83.
ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES AND SHORT ESSAYS
“The Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768).” Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 2024. https://encyclopediavirginia.org
“La Ligue haudenosaunee, ou l’art du récit.” In Pierre Singaravélou, et al, eds., Colonisations: Notre Histoire (Paris: Seuil, 2023), 887-89.
“Indigenous Nations and US Foreign Policy.” In Jon Butler, ed., Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (New York, NY: Oxford University Press; article published June 2020). doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.744
“Iroquois Diplomacy.” In Gordon Martel, ed., The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Diplomacy (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2018).
"Native Americans," in Mark G. Spencer, ed., Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment (2 vols., New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 2: 740-43.
"The Beaver Wars," in Antonio Thomson and Christos Frentzos, eds., The Routledge Handbook of U.S. Diplomatic and Military History: Colonial Period to 1877 (New York: Routledge, 2014), 33-41.
"Agriculture." In John Demos, ed.,American Centuries: The Ideas, Issues, and Trends that Made U.S. History, Volume 2, The Seventeenth Century (New York: MTM Publishing, 2011), 17-23.
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