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Where does the work of de/colonizing preservice teacher education begin? Aboriginal children's literature? Storytelling and theatrical performance? Or, with a paradigm shift? This article takes up some of these questions and challenges, old and new, and begins to problematize these deeper layers. In this article, the authors explore the conversations and counterpoints that came about looking at the theme of social justice through the lens of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit (FNMI) children's literature. As the scope of this lens widened, it became more evident to the authors that there are several filters that can be applied to the work of de/colonizing preservice teacher education programs and the larger educational system. This article also explores what it means to act and perform notions of de/colonization, and is constructed like a script, thus bridging the voices of academia, theatre, and Indigenous knowledge. In the first half (the academic script) the authors work through the messy and tangled web of de/colonization, while the second half (the actors' script) examines these frameworks and narratives through the actor's voice. The article calls into question the notions of performing inquiry and deconstructing narrative.

Framed at the intersection of activist and Indigenous research methodologies, this article explores the way two First Nations senior high school students made sense of their visual and literary identity texts (Cummins & Early, 2011). An Ojibwe artist-in-residence at an urban secondary school in southwestern Ontario and a university-based researcher facilitated the creation of these texts, which helped students form concrete understandings of their life experiences as rooted in social, cultural, political, and historical understandings. Dialoguing about students' visual and literary identity texts proved to be an innovative and engaging way to explore what it means to place Aboriginal students' identities at the center of the curriculum. Insights into the students' experiences are detailed in terms of context, process, output, and impact. (Contains 4 figures and 6 footnotes.)