REALITY TVWas 'Alaskan Bush People' Staged? Inside the Alleged 'Fake' Moments
Years after its finale, 'Alaskan Bush People' is facing renewed scrutiny over what was real and what may have been staged.
May 26 2025, Published 8:15 p.m. ET
Alaskan Bush People kept viewers hooked for 14 seasons with its wild and off-the-grid adventures — but when the show ended in 2022, questions about how real it all was started to surface.
Were the Browns truly living the bush life, or was it more staged than it seemed?
Late family patriarch, Billy Brown, fiercely defended their way of life back in 2015, calling naysayers "bobs in the basement" during an interview with RadarOnline.
A decade later, his son Bear Brown also insisted it was "not faked at all" in an Instagram video.
Family patriarch Billy Brown fiercely defended their remote lifestyle against skeptics in 2015.
Despite their portrayal as rugged, isolated homesteaders living off the land, insiders began to do some digging about their lifestyle. Locals whispered that the Brown clan didn't quite disengage from civilization. Reports revealed that they weren't in the wilderness after all — and locals alleged that a pizza shop was more accessible to them than viewers would like to think.
While filming the reality show, Billy, Ami, and their seven children — Noah, Snowbird, Rain, Joshua, Solomon, Gabriel and Matthew —were spotted living in a hotel in Hoonah, Alaska.
Locals claimed they saw the Browns in a hotel during filming, not in the wilderness.
Neighbors Jay Erickson and Becky Hunnicutt noted they saw the family coming and going from Icy Strait Lodge late into the night. "All of the boys have their own rooms," Becky recounted.
Raiven Brown, Bear's estranged wife, further complicated the narrative in a jaw-dropping interview with The U.S. Sun in 2020. She declared that "none of it was real," alleging only "10 percent of it" was "real."
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Raiven Brown alleged that only '10 percent' of the show reflected the Brown family's actual lifestyle.
"When I was there, the only person who lived on the mountain was Rain and Bird, and they were living in trailers," Raiven claimed. She alleged she and Bear were shacking up in Loomis, Wash., rather than in the wild.
One infamous episode in Season 1, titled "Fight or Flight," also had viewers on edge. The Discovery Channel shared an intro stating that they'd been granted permission to document a secluded bush family's life. However, when the family was startled awake by gunshots, tensions rose.
A tense gunshot scene from 'Alaskan Bush People' Season 1 was reportedly never corroborated by local authorities.
"This land is not worth dying for," Billy tells the camera.
Yet here's the kicker: the Anchorage Daily News reported that Alaska State Troopers found no evidence of gunfire reported by the Alaskan Bush People crew.
