Despite some opposition from local elders, the hamlet council in Aklavik, Northwest Territories, has given an Edmonton film crew permission to exhume the body of the Mad Trapper, Albert Johnson.

To this day, no one has confirmed the true identity of the notorious trapper or where he came from — a mystery that filmmakers with Myth Merchant Films plan to solve by taking a DNA sample from the remains in a one-hour documentary scheduled to air on the Discovery Channel in a year and a half.

Aklavik, N.W.T.

But when the crew's request first surfaced in Aklavik, a hamlet of 600 people about 60 kilometres west of Inuvik, elders and some councillors said the dead should be shown respect and left alone.

More than 15 years earlier, the community had ruled against Yukon author Dick North's proposal to exhume Johnson's body for the same purpose.

Johnson, who lived on the Rat River in the Mackenzie Delta area, rose to notoriety in the early 1930s when he killed a policeman who came to his cabin making inquiries, then led police on a five-week manhunt through the Arctic wilderness in the dead of winter before he was shot and killed. Johnson was buried in Aklavik in 1932.

Aklavik Mayor Knute Hansen said while council's decision was difficult to make, the hamlet council decided in late March to allow Myth Merchant Films' request because the filmmakers promised to conduct the exhumation in a very respectful way, using priests and a ceremony.

"All the counsellors respect the elders, and some of the elders were opposed to it," Hansen said Thursday. "But I think there seemed to be reasonable support in the community. And I think there's just a general desire to … sort of bring closure to it."

Myth Merchant producer Carrie Gour said she went door-to-door in the community, talking to people about their concerns. She added that many were persuaded to support the film endeavour once they learned that taking DNA samples from Johnson's remains could help answer questions for a family in the United States that thinks it might be related to him.
 
Gour said exhumation is planned for this summer, and she is also looking for local residents to participate in a dramatic re-enactment of a police chase.

North's book, The Mad Trapper of Rat River, concludes that the man buried as Albert Johnson was an American named Johnny Johnson who had had several run-ins with the law before heading north to the backwoods of Canada.