Criminal nonplaces: Šárka Bubíková, ‘Nonplaces and Crime in David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s Winter Counts’, in Petr Chalupský, Tereza Topolovská (eds), Spatiality in Contemporary Anglophone Literatures, Routledge, 2026 | settler colonial studies blog

Criminal nonplaces: Šárka Bubíková, ‘Nonplaces and Crime in David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s Winter Counts’, in Petr Chalupský, Tereza Topolovská (eds), Spatiality in Contemporary Anglophone Literatures, Routledge, 2026

03Apr26

Abstract: This chapter examines David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s crime novel Winter Counts (2020) through the lens of spatial theory and postcolonial critique, continuing the exploration of the relationship between place, belonging, and identity in the postcolonial context. The analysis explores how spatial dynamics shape both the novel’s crime narrative and its commentary on settler colonialism and Indigenous resistance. Drawing on the concepts of nonplace and placelessness, the chapter argues that these spatial categories reflect the socio-economic and legal conditions that foster crime and marginalisation in Native communities. The novel juxtaposes meaningful places of belonging with nonplaces that serve as sites of violence and disconnection. While the utilisation of nonplaces follows crime fiction conventions, in Winter Counts, the nonplaces uniquely and simultaneously expose the structural and systemic crimes of settler colonialism and effectively link current violence and crime with their historical counterparts. In contrast to clearly identifiable places and nonplaces, the Rosebud Reservation itself emerges as a hybrid space, functioning both as a place of cultural rootedness and as a nonplace marked by state neglect and legal ambiguity. This spatial hybridity mirrors the complexity of contemporary Native American identity and survivance.

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