Swan River First Nation

This is a book about grief, death and longing. It’s about the gristle that lodges itself deep into one’s gums, between incisors and canines.

Teeth details not only the symptoms of colonization, but also the foundational and constitutive asymmetries that allow for it to proliferate and reproduce itself. Dallas Hunt grapples with the material realities and imaginaries Indigenous communities face, as well as the pockets of livability that they inhabit just to survive. Still this collection seeks joy in the everyday, in the flourishing of Indigenous Peoples in the elsewhere, in worlds to come.

Nestling into the place between love and ruin, Teeth traces the collisions of love undone and being undone by love, where “the hope is to find an ocean nested in shoulders—to reside there when the tidal waves come. and then love names the ruin.”

Additional Information
112 pages | 5.50" x 8.00" | Paperback

A group of Cree teens gather around a fire to share stories of spirits and shapeshifters in this chilling debut graphic novel.

After wandering out to the river near their homes, five teens decide to build a fire and exchange horror stories. Chad begins by telling the group about an unfortunate fisher who encountered a cluster of small, malevolent creatures while navigating the river in his canoe. Attempting to defend himself, Carl lashed out with an oar. . . and his world changed forever. One by one, the teens try to outdo each other, and the evening evolves into an impromptu storytelling competition.

On certain nights, if you walk along Loon River and peer under the bridge, you might spot a fire. You might hear a laugh. You might hear a scream. If you edge closer - and the conditions are just right - your view of the river will melt away, into the inky black beyond the firelight. Not to worry - the echoes of rushing water will help you find your way back. Or will they?

Inspired by Cree folklore and modern Cree life, Bad Medicine will transport readers to terrifying new worlds that only exist at the edges of human imagination.

Reviews
"Bad Medicine's about as good as medicine can get - stories with blood on the ground, sure, but a lot left in the heart, too." - Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Only Good Indians

"Like a peyote-stitch medallion, the interlaced pattern of stories found within Twin's graphic novel, Bad Medicine, remind me of belonging, remind me of cold nights around a warm fire with friends - sharing chilling stories, some all too real and close to home. This Indigenous horror debut is a medallion I'd wear proudly on my chest. And? I have a clawing hunger for more." - Shane Hawk, author of Anoka and co-editor of Never Whistle At Night

"This graphic novel is the rare sort of work that can be read and digested easily but that also provides the cautionary tales and allegory that elevate horror to something that remains long after one has finished reading." - Kirkus

Educator Information
Recommended for ages 14+

Additional Information
116 pages | 6.57" x 8.53" | Paperback

Creeland is a poetry collection concerned with notions of home and the quotidian attachments we feel to those notions, even across great distances. Even in an area such as Treaty Eight (northern Alberta), a geography decimated by resource extraction and development, people are creating, living, laughing, surviving and flourishing—or at least attempting to.

The poems in this collection are preoccupied with the role of Indigenous aesthetics in the creation and nurturing of complex Indigenous lifeworlds. They aim to honour the encounters that everyday Cree economies enable, and the words that try—and ultimately fail—to articulate them. Hunt gestures to the movements, speech acts and relations that exceed available vocabularies, that may be housed within words like joy, but which the words themselves cannot fully convey. This debut collection is vital in the context of a colonial aesthetic designed to perpetually foreclose on Indigenous futures and erase Indigenous existence.

the Cree word for constellation

is a saskatoon berry bush in summertime

the translation for policeman

in Cree is mîci nisôkan, kohkôs

the translation for genius

in Cree is my kôhkom muttering in her sleep

the Cree word for poetry is your four-year-old

niece’s cracked lips spilling out

broken syllables of nêhiyawêwin in between

the gaps in her teeth 

Reviews
"Here is an ode to northern Alberta, to the kokums and aunties who are worlds unto themselves, to the vastness and profundity of the Cree language. Dallas Hunt’s Creeland is tender and aching and intellectually exciting. Hunt uses the lyric mode to write another kind of public history about the prairies, one in which we Cree are always beautiful and indomitable. I can’t thank him enough for this." — Billy-Ray Belcourt, February 2021

"Dallas Hunt’s debut collection of poetry is work built from the ground up, meaning he has read, loved, studied poetry. He uses language “lived” in his relationships with family, home, community. Creeland feels like home to me. It “[crackles] with love and life.”" — Marilyn Dumont, February 2021

"From index to glossary, this stunning work bends with the possibilities of saplings. Mortally aware, a mind that can be everywhere “wolf willows and pin / cherries,” here is a poet halting the mallets of supremacy. Dallas Hunt aligns “petals of / larkspur” against the “maw of the inferno” to speak of Creeland. Entwined in “pîsim’s luminous / touch,” the poet’s smile returns home. Bringing forth fine, wry and tenderizing poetry, rickety love begets gale winds, and everyday, constellatory magnitudes. A quieting read with dimensional perspective, this book will transport you." — Cecily Nicholson, February 2021

Additional Information
128 pages | 5.50" x 8.00"