Philippe Morin
Northern News Services
Monday, May 28, 2007

AKLAVIK - When filmmaker Michael Jorgensen answered his cell-phone on May 14, he was standing somewhere in sunny California.

The award-winning filmmaker is still planning on coming to Aklavik this summer to exhume the body of the Mad Trapper, but will first finish a project called Dinosaur Resurrection.

"It's a show that I've been working on for about a year. It's about a paleontologist who's uncovered the entire body of a dinosaur, not just the bones, but the mummified and fossilized body," he said from a cell-phone on location May 14.

He explained this is a very unique find.

"It's the fossilized remains of a body that was mummified. Think of a petrified tree; well, this is like a petrified body."

Once the project wraps up, Jorgensen said interviews should begin in Aklavik, in late June or early July.

Carrie Gour, a fellow filmmaker who helped convince Aklavik's residents to allow the project, said it's unsure when the exhumation will happen.

"We still haven't nailed down the dates for a lot of things," she said.

"The ballpark is still sometime this summer, but we need to coordinate the schedules of a half-dozen people," she said.

She added the film crew would include a lead pathologist, a forensic anthropologist, a DNA specialist, both herself and Michael Jorgensen, and also a three-person film crew, which includes a still photographer.

Aklavik mayor Knute Hansen could not be contacted as of press time, but the hamlet recently agreed to allow the film project to proceed after extended consultations with residents.

The exhumation is being planned as part of a 60-minute documentary, which will attempt to determine the Mad Trapper's real identity through DNA testing.