This thesis examines historical and contemporary debates surrounding the way in which knowledge traditions interact in the Arctic. This is done through examining the theoretical and practical history of cartography, both as a discipline, and as applied to the Arctic.

In doing so, I make the argument for an inextricable link between cartography and knowledge production across supposedly different ‘knowledge traditions’, through the privileging of performativity as the primary way of making knowledge, and an understanding of human cognition as inherently spatial and narratological.

Based on these understandings, I examine debates within geography and wider social science that might assist the practising of cartography under this philosophy – the possibilities for ‘working with multiple ontologies’. For example I explore the opportunity for working with complex adaptive systems, and suggest that a contemporary understanding of how cyberspace is produced in the Arctic fits in with these philosophies. I also examine those debates that might stand in the way of practice that acknowledges these philosophies of complexity – for example debates about the nature of digital materiality, and of the epistemological / ontological divide.

These theories and debates are anchored in the Arctic through the use of historical and contemporary examples concerned with the mapping of space and knowledge primarily in the North American Arctic.

Ultimately debating a future for practising cartography in the Arctic is situated within the confines of post-colonial critique, so I examine how we define “counter-mapping”, and where the philosophies outlined above fit into this politically strong tradition. In conclusion I suggest that whilst contemporary theory has much to offer an increasingly digital indigenous Arctic, there remains a partial disconnect between theory and practice that can be addressed through reading this debate.