Percy Nabigon Died at 3 ½ Months of Age in 1938.

Who did they dig up in Ontario?

By Michelle Stirling © With research from Nina Green

My bad. In my recent 3-part series, I was wrong about Percy Nabigon. As with many aspects of historical research, a bit more effort yields surprising results.

CBC has covered the story of the repatriation of Percy Onabigon’s remains from southern Ontario to his birthplace of Long Lake #58 First Nation reserve in northern Ontario. The story is told from the perspective and research of Claire Onabigon who claims that her mother’s brother Percy, who suffered from epilepsy and partial paralysis, was forced into St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School, and from there, taken away to institutionalized medical care in southern Ontario, without the family’s consent. He was never seen again. He reportedly died of tuberculosis at age 27 in an institution.

On the 59^th anniversary of Percy Onabigon’s death, 7 family members, along with a pipe carrier travelled south to his grave to exhume his body.

But whose body did they exhume?

Percy John Onabigon? Percy John Onabigon and Percy Nabigon are not the same person.

Percy Nabigon’s death certificate.

According to Ontario Death Certificate #4337, Percy Nabigon was born on July 17, 1938, to Duncan Nabigon and his wife Marion (sic – Mary Ann) Champion (aka Chapais). Percy died three and a half months later on October 30, 1938, of pneumococcal meningitis. Duncan and Mary Ann are the parents of Bertha Nabigon whose daughter Claire Onabigon initiated the repatriation of someone’s remains from southern Ontario, but probably not her would-be uncle Percy. Since Percy died as an infant, he was never 8 years old, and it must have been someone else in Long Lake #58 First Nation who was partially paralyzed and an epileptic.

Kimberly Murray, former Special Interlocutor on Missing Children and Unmarked Graves Related to Indian Residential Schools, in her report, which is ironically named “Sites of Truth, Sites of Conscience,” covers the story of Percy, the boy with partial paralysis and epilepsy and she indicates that he died at East Zorra-Tavistock, near Woodstock, Ontario on May 1, 1966 (according to footnote 202). However, this footnote states that the name is Percy John Onabigon, while the death certificate of Percy Nabigon, the infant, does not have a middle name.

Mary Ann Chapais’ family tree on Ancestry.com also lists Percy as having been born July 17, 1938, and died Oct. 30, 1938.

According to the CBC article, the repatriation of whoever they have exhumed was a costly affair:

But it wasn't easy; the family appealed to both the provincial and federal governments to cover the roughly $45,000 cost.

Because Percy died as an adult, not a child, the family was told the federal government would not provide coverage under the Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund.

After CBC News shared the Onabigons' story in September, the Ontario government offered to foot the bill. The money comes from the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs and First Nations Economic Reconciliation's Residential School Unit.

As shown above, according to historical records, Percy died as an infant. According to his death certificate, he was buried on the Long Lake #58 First Nation reserve on Nov. 3, 1938.

It seems like the costly work of Kimberly Murray’s Office, in the order of ~$10 million, plus a six-month extension of unknown cost, was in error. The $1.4 billion tax-funded CBC has promoted a false story that resulted in Ontario taxpayers having to pay out an additional $45,000 for this repatriation process.

Once again, Canada’s reputation has been falsely smeared by an angry relative, Claire Onabigon, who spent decades researching this story, according to CBC.

"You chose to put him in an institution, to take him from his family, to take him from everything that he knew, and you hid him until he died — so it's your responsibility to bring him back," she continued, referring to the Canadian government.

CBC states that:

Bertha died knowing her brother was buried in Woodstock and with a promise from Claire that she would bring Percy home.

Did Bertha die 'knowing her brother was buried in Woodstock' because Claire told her that? How long had Claire been pursuing this search for Percy's grave before Bertha died in 2004? Oddly, Bertha's obituary doesn't even mention Percy, or any of her siblings apart from the three sisters who survived her. Her obituary doesn't even mention her husband, who according to Ancestry, was Pierre Brassard.

This story brings into stark focus the point various independent researchers and journalists have been making all along. The Bands who own these reserve cemeteries have no idea who is buried in them. Graveyards and markers have not been maintained; records don’t seem to have been kept by family members, but now they expect taxpayers to foot the bill for finding records related to their distant relatives who died decades ago.

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It's pointless for the federal government to be spending millions of dollars funding searches for unmarked graves in reserve cemeteries or old apple orchards when the Band itself has no idea who's buried there and when there is no list of names of any children who are missing and not accounted for. If the Band doesn't know who's buried in their cemeteries, who does? The Bands pretend the Catholic Church knows, but even if the Church still has burial records for a reserve cemetery because the cemetery was originally part of a Catholic mission and parish, those burial records won't specify the location of the burial plot.

A video from 8 months ago embedded in the CBC story features Kimberly Murray stating that Canada has signed on to the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP). She says that Article 12 states that Canada has an obligation to repatriate Indigenous human remains, and that we must create legislation and funding to enact this, or we are violating international law.

As with many institutions of the time, mental hospitals, TB sanitoriums, homes for the disabled, were typically far from their loved ones. Thus, many of these ‘wards of the State’ (who were of all ethnicities) who often lived out their lives in such facilities, when they died, they were buried either in a cemetery on-site or in a community cemetery nearby.

Can you imagine the cost to Canada of repatriating the many hundreds or thousands of Indigenous people (many of them adults and unrelated to Indian Residential Schools) who died at these facilities and who may not even have living relatives? People only seem to care about finding long-deceased relatives now as it props up the theme of ‘genocide’ related to Indian Residential Schools; that and the money associated with such claims.

It would seem that the Onabigon family is unaware that according to historical records, Percy Nabigon died at age 3 ½ months and is already buried in the Long Lake #58 First Nation cemetery, somewhere.

It also seems that Canadian taxpayers have spent millions of dollars on terribly flawed research by Kimberly Murray, and Claire’s story and Murray’s demands were breathlessly repeated by CBC reporters with no fact-checking.

Millions of Canadians are lined up at the food bank while taxpayers had to come up with $45,000 to repatriate the body of someone who is not the infant Percy Nabigon.

Allegedly an unnamed forensic anthropologist is working with the family and that an autopsy and DNA testing will be done at the Ontario's Forensic Pathology Service in Toronto on the new Percy John Onabigon who died at age 27 of Tuberculosis. It will be interesting to see what results are announced.

Canadians were shocked to their core by the claims of a mass grave and human remains of 215 children allegedly found in the Kamloops First Nation’s old orchard near their former Indian Residential School on May 27, 2021. In fact, no remains have been found, and the area lies over previous land use of 2000 feet of septic trenches which is most likely the real source of the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) ‘anomalies’ - incorrectly interpreted as if graves.

It was that hideous claim of such atrocities, made on May 27, 2021, that spurred parliament to push through the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) despite the fact that six provinces and several First Nations opposed it.

Clearly UNDRIP is now being used as a tool to manipulate Canadians and impoverish this county. UNDRIP must be repealed immediately and the Onabigon family must pay back the $45,000. It would be nice to get the millions back from Kimberly Murray, too.

It would be nice to have a Canada where open, civil debate on such matters of great national importance was the norm and where CBC stops being a tax-funded megaphone for demoralizing atrocity propaganda.

To get there, Canada, we must be Sorry No More.