The networked and digital production of geographical knowledge in contemporary times is dependent on the labour and participation of online volunteers who create and share global geographical projects like OpenStreetMap (OSM). This practice of free and open mapping – often framed as crowdsourcing – is due to the social and technical nature of mapping. OSM, together with other kinds of participatory mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), is celebrated as the democratisation of Geography and the development of individuals – especially those in the Global South – into mapmaking citizens in a seemingly inevitable digital world.

However, the critical and political aspects of the making of such digital geography are usually ignored due to the ongoing illusion of mapping as a neutral and objective practice. It is also due to a broader colonial culture of searching for new frontiers and new worlds, especially in the geographical disciplines, which usually regard OSM as neogeography. From a native perspective, this PhD thesis takes on the challenge of studying such coloniality of digital geography in terms of context, discourse, and subjects by investigating the situations, factors, and alternatives involving the production of free and open-source maps by volunteer communities like that of OSM and related groups, especially those dealing with crises. To dive into the topic, this research studied the mapmakers through critical autoethnography, supported by wayfinding and storywork, and found out that mapmakers live highly social and politicised lives online and offline; while being influenced by complex factors such as education, precarity, attention, and recreation; and reproducing a cartographic, geospatial, and surveillant culture. In other words, the author of this PhD thesis studied digital coloniality by becoming a mapmaker, hence the title of the work, “How to Make a Mapmaker”.

This thesis, mostly written through creative nonfiction, claims that participatory mapping, now done more digitally, is historically and presently intertwined with colonial projects as a method of collecting intelligence from Native and Indigenous peoples, with limited opportunities for resistance. Decolonisation is ultimately about the return of stolen land, which is often not the focus of participatory mapping communities under Western hegemony. I observed that participatory mapping, by focusing on individualism and uncritically revealing geographical knowledge to the public and the Internet, are incommensurable with and may be detrimental to collective struggles for decolonisation in both the Third World like the Philippines and settler colonies such as the United States and New Zealand. Also, amid such recolonisation of places like the Pacific, I emphasised the importance of hope and stories, which are also maps.