Joe Borsato is a PhD candidate, in his third year of research, in the Department of History at Queen’s University and the Robert L. Middlekauff Fellow at the Huntington Library (2023-2024). With previous work experience in First Nation communities, sustainability non-profits, and the heritage sector, Joe now researches the histories of settler-Indigenous relations, Indigenous land rights, dispossession, and property formation in early modern colonization. His interests also include Indigenous governance, Indigenous relations with New France, early modern empires, state-formation in Tudor-Stuart England & Ireland, Roman law, Florentine humanism, and the political thought of corporations (15th to 18th c.). He is fortunate to work with Dr. Scott Berthelette and Dr. Jeffrey Collins.
Joe’s SSHRC-supported doctoral project investigates the “discourses of intrusion,” or the legal justifications for the English occupation of Indigenous spaces in the Atlantic world, including in Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin Island), Tsenacommacah (Virginia), Mi'kma'ki (Acadia), K’taqamkuk (Newfoundland), Güiri noko (the Orinoco delta), and Mhumhain (Munster). The project examines foundations of international law at a time of early Indigenous-English contact and entanglement in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The project reveals the early Inuit, Powhatan, Mi’kmaq, Beothuk, Arawak, and Irish expressions of territorial possession against expansionism, demonstrating the early modern basis of Indigenous land rights. Given the lack of historical research in this area and the Government of Canada’s implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2021, the relationship between Indigenous land rights and international law is currently a topic of considerable pertinence.
"Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you truly are" - Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)
Book Reviews
Winchcombe, Rachel. Encountering Early America. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021. In Journal of British Studies 62:2 (2023).
Pluymers, Keith. No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. In Ethnohistory 70:2 (2023).
Conference Papers
“‘In Matter of State’: Law, Governance, Occupation, and the Virginia Company in Tsenacommacah, 1609-1622.” North American Conference on British Studies. Chicago, Illinois, USA, 13 November 2022.
“In Solo Puro et in Area Pura: Law, Empire, and Dispossession in Early Jacobean Ireland and Virginia, 1603-1622.” Northeast Conference on British Studies. Online. 22 October 2021.
Presentations
"'They came vnto him by Inheritance': Occupation, Property, and Anglo-Indigenous Land Claims in Seventeenth Century North America." Guest Lecture in HIST 403 "The Geography, History, and Ecology of Anishinaabewaki: Anishinaabeg in the Great Lakes Basin, 1000ce-1867" (Professor Scott Berthelette). Queen's University, Kingston, ON, 16 May 2023
"'I am Also King, and this My Land': Foundations of Indigenous Land Rights in Early English Colonization, 1576 - 1624." Guest Lecture for the Wilp Wilxo'oskwhl Nisga'a Institute (Professor Maureen Atkinson). Online. 26 January 2023.
"'Qui s'habituerent audit païs': Corporate-Indigenous Relations and the Company of One Hundred Associates, 1627-1663." Guest Lecture in HIST 217 "Indigenous Peoples and New France" (Professor Scott Berthelette). Queen's University, Kingston, ON, 26 October 2022.
“The Legacy of Jamestown: Terrence Malick’s The New World (2005) and English colonization in Tsenacommacah, 1606 – 1622.” Guest lecture in HIST 245 “Indigenous History in Film” (Professor Scott Berthelette). Queen’s University, Kingston, ON. 14 February 2022.
“How to Create Small Museum Education Programming.” Presented in collaboration with Mary Forbes. British Columbia Museums Association (BCMA). Prince George, BC, 1 October 2019.
“The Myth of the Frontier in Rural Museums: Strategies for Promoting Heritage and Historical Consciousness.” British Columbia Museums Association (BCMA). Kelowna, BC, 23 October 2018.
Curated Exhibits
“Contextualizing St. Joseph’s Mission.” A community-driven museum exhibition prepared and
presented in partnership with the Orange Shirt Society at the Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin,
Williams Lake, BC. Opened July 1, 2019.
“Cartography in the Cariboo.” A museum exhibition prepared and presented at the Museum of
the Cariboo Chilcotin, Williams Lake, BC. Opened May 20, 2019.
“The Chilcotin War of 1864.” A community-driven museum exhibition prepared and presented at the Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin, Williams Lake, BC. Opened June 1, 2018.
