The Researcher as the Instrument
In this Scholarly Personal Narrative, I occupy the dual role of researcher and research subject. My positionality is shaped by my status as a sixty-year-old white settler woman, a mother, and a scholar-practitioner who spent eighteen years within the “precariat” of the Canadian academy. I acknowledge that my vantage point is situated on the traditional and unceded territory of the Secwépemc peoples in Kamloops and the ancestral lands of the Cochimí in Loreto. My reflections are filtered through the “literary version of myself,” Amy Tucker, a device used to maintain the critical distance necessary to analyse systemic trauma while honouring the raw immediacy of lived experience.
Institutional Precarity and Epistemic Authority
For nearly two decades, my professional identity was defined by the “sessional” contract, a state of permanent temporariness. This project is rooted in the belief that the body of the precarious worker is a site of knowledge. I reject the institutional gaslighting that suggests burnout is a personal failing; instead, I position my physical depletion (insomnia, chronic pain, and depression) as somatic evidence of institutional violence. My authority to speak on these subjects is drawn precisely from my exhaustion, and from having lived it.
Relational Accountability and Ethical Restraint
Guided by Wilson’s (2008) framework of relational accountability, a methodology I have refined in my doctoral research, I recognise that my story is inextricably linked to the lives of my sisters, Rosalie and Mila, and my children. My positionality as the “oldest sister” and “mother-caregiver” grants me a specific, power-laden perspective. I practise ethical restraint by using pseudonyms and omitting “crisis data” that belongs to them alone. I am far from a neutral observer of my family’s struggles with mental health and addiction; I am a participant-observer bound by love and a human right to care.
The Third Shore: A Decolonial Objective
My positionality is defined by a transition from “vocational hope” to intentional alonetude. My departure from the university was an unpaid sabbatical, chosen on my own terms, an act of epistemic justice and a deliberate reclamation of agency from a system that views contract labour as a disposable resource. This narrative is my Third Shore, the space where the scholarly lens and the healing spirit converge to witness the truth of surviving the modern academic machine.
Ancestry: A Heritage of Displacement and Resilience
My lineage is a tapestry of survival, woven from histories of forced migration and the search for belonging. On my maternal side, I am of French Acadian descent, with roots tracing back to the early 1600s in Port Royal. This heritage is defined by a unique historical synthesis; during the 1700s, the Acadians were welcomed by the Mi’kmaq people, leading to a profound era of alliance and intermarriage. This kinship was more than social — it was foundational to Acadian survival, as the Mi’kmaq shared the traditional knowledge necessary to thrive on the land.
My family’s history is marked by the Grand Dérangement, the Expulsion of the Acadians, a systemic act of colonial violence that forced my ancestors from the fertile marshes of Port Royal to the refuge of Memramcook, New Brunswick, in the 1750s. This ancestral memory of being uprooted, of losing “tenure” on the land only to rebuild in the face of erasure, informs my current understanding of institutional precarity. It is a legacy of the “precariat” that predates the modern academy, echoing the resilience required to maintain dignity when systems seek to displace the individual.
Complementing this Atlantic history is the more recent arrival of my grandfather, who emigrated from Austria in the early 1900s. He brought with him the immigrant’s necessity for labour and the hope of settler stability in a new world. This side of my ancestry represents the “New Canadian” drive, the belief that hard work within established institutions leads to security. As I stand at sixty, having navigated eighteen years of sessional contracts, I feel the collision of these two lineages: the Acadian history of surviving systemic expulsion and the Austrian immigrant hope for institutional belonging.
A Note on Intellectual and Ethical Inspiration
In navigating this personal and scholarly journey, I am deeply inspired by Indigenous literature and methodologies. In particular, I draw from the works of scholars like Shawn Wilson (2008) and his framework of Relational Accountability, as well as the decolonial perspectives found in the literature of the territories I have inhabited.
I wish to be clear: I carry no claim to Indigenous ancestry as a cultural or political identity. That said, DNA ancestry results have indicated Mi’kmaq ancestry in my lineage, a finding that deepened rather than defined my curiosity, and that I hold with care and humility rather than as a claim. My engagement with Indigenous texts and traditions is rooted in curiosity, profound respect, and a desire for ethical alignment with the lands of the Secwépemc and the Cochimí. While my Acadian ancestors were welcomed into Mi’kmaq kinship through marriage and alliance centuries ago, I recognise my modern position as a settler-scholar of Acadian and Austrian descent. My use of Indigenous frameworks is an act of “witnessing” and a commitment to social justice, an effort to learn from ways of being that prioritise relationality and care over the extractive, violent logic of the modern academic institution. By naming my inspirations alongside my actual ancestry, I aim to practise epistemic integrity, ensuring that the Third Shore I seek is built on a foundation of honesty and respect for the original caretakers of the land.