Reasons Why Alaskan Bush People Is Fake

Reality television transformed documentary filmmaking into mainstream, episodic television. In reality TV, the lives of interesting people are laid bare for TV cameras as they go about their day-to-day business, and cable networks in the 21st century found a way to captivate audiences with unscripted programs about tough guys staying alive or working in punishing terrain. Into this cultural landscape of shows like "Man vs. Wild" and "Deadliest Catch" came "Alaskan Bush People" on the Discovery Channel. Running for 14 seasons from 2014 to 2022, the show captured the fascinating exploits of the Brown family. Billy and Ami Brown and their expansive brood lived off of the land and relied on their own survival skills — and each other — to carve out a life in a difficult region of Alaska far from the comforts of civilization.

But as reporters, observers, fans, and even cast members would later allege, "Alaskan Bush People" was a reality TV show in name only. In one of the biggest scandals to ever hit the Discovery Channel, much of what was shown in "Alaskan Bush People" was staged, falsified, or carefully rigged by producers. Over its long run, the show was responsible for many of the times that the Discovery Channel lied to you.

The whole premise of "Alaskan Bush People" is that it's about a family drawn to live in the wilderness. The main setting for the reality TV series is a loosely associated collection of rustic buildings in the middle of a remote and very natural location that the Brown family refers to as "Browntown." According to others who live near enough to the base camp, the whole of Browntown is a creation for television. The Brown family allegedly didn't really live there and treated it like a set. When the series was actively filming, the Browns would occasionally sleep on the premises of Browntown but would otherwise operate out of a nearby hotel in Hoonah, Alaska, called the Icy Strait Lodge. Matt Brown and some crew members temporarily resided at the Misty Bay Lodge as well.

Members of the Brown family didn't even live in Alaska when their show wasn't in production, and that constituted a crime. Under the Permanent Fund Dividend, year-round residents of Alaska receive hefty payouts from the state's lucrative oil industry. Billy Brown and son Joshua Brown pleaded guilty in 2016 to defrauding the Alaskan government out of around $20,000. They admitted to not residing in Alaska at all between 2009 and 2012.

An "Alaskan Bush People" episode called "Fight or Flight" first aired in 2014 as part of the reality show's first season. Only four episodes in, it would seem the supposedly documentary-style production was already manufacturing stories. According to a disclaimer that aired at the beginning of the episode (per the Anchorage Daily News), "during production, an incident occurred and filming was stopped." As filming was paused, Billy and Ami Brown and all seven of their children were forced to flee their remote cabin after some hear the sounds of two guns being fired nearby. As some male members of the family head out to confront the danger, another shot rings out, and the Browns retreat into the house and then leave the area in favor of a boat.

More than a year after this "Alaskan Bush People" episode debuted, a reporter from the major Alaskan newspaper the Anchorage Daily News dug into the story to see if the source of the gunshots had ever been found. No one associated with the production of "Alaskan Bush People" had filed a police report regarding gunfire, but they had told Alaska State Troopers that a neighbor of the supposedly remote homestead had shot off fireworks in the direction of a camera-equipped helicopter in flight around dinnertime one evening.

Throughout "Alaskan Bush People," members of the Brown family ply their trades in the Copper River basin of southcentral Alaska. It's supposed to be an extremely rural, distant, and hard-to-reach spot in the already far-away and sparsely populated Alaska, but the Browns' home turf isn't as obscure as the show would like viewers to believe. About 2,500 people live in the area, and the Browns are seen living and working out of a house that's in a small neighborhood of homes not far from Richardson Highway. An unpaved road accessible from that thoroughfare leads to a settlement called Copper Center situated about 10 miles away, while a pizza parlor shown in a couple of episodes is only a half mile away from the Browns' home area.

Because the Browns didn't live that far away from others, filming "Alaskan Bush People" proved disruptive for their neighbors. As reported by the Anchorage Daily News, a man named Jason Hoke lived in a house right next to the Browns' encampment; he's the one who got so annoyed by loud crew vehicles that he shot fireworks into the air when a helicopter associated with the production interrupted his family's dinner.

Even though the Browns on "Alaskan Bush People" supposedly lived far away from any sizable population, the young adults in the family managed to find and participate in a viable dating pool. While that may strain plausibility for viewers, one relationship depicted on the series may have been entirely staged to create a plotline for the show. On the 2016 episode "Driving Miss Rainy," Noah Brown returned to Alaska after some time away with a potential love interest accompanying him. Presented as the result of a random encounter turned romantic, the relationship between Brown and the woman, a server from San Diego named Karryna, only lasted for the length of a single episode.

Karryna wasn't just a server from San Diego, however. Prior to her appearance on "Alaskan Bush People," Karryna Kauffman participated in the 2012 Miss California pageant and appeared in a handful of short films. In other words, the person who popped up on the supposedly reality-based "Alaskan Bush People" was an actor.

"Alaskan Bush People" was an adaptation and expansion of "One Wave at a Time," a 2007 book by future show star Billy Brown. The memoir showed how the sprawling Brown family got along fine in rugged, rural Alaska without the use of modern technology or electricity. Producers requested that the Browns continue to live that way for the show, and they pretended to do so for the sake of making interesting television. But by the time filming on "Alaskan Bush People" got underway, the Browns no longer followed that lifestyle. "I loved filming the show, but I didn't like lying about the way I live and the way things are in life," family and cast member Matt Brown said on Instagram in 2021, two years after he departed "Alaskan Bush People."

And while an anti-technology viewpoint was fundamental to "Alaskan Bush People," the Brown children weren't exactly technophobes, nor did they lack access to modern communication tools. Bear Brown (pictured) used his social media accounts to stage a death hoax during the run of the show in 2018, while many of his siblings actively updated their own Instagram accounts while "Alaskan Bush People" was still on the air.

When "Alaskan Bush People" star Noah Brown got married in 2018, his wedding photographer brought along her daughter, model Raiven Adams (pictured), as an assistant. That's where Adams met "Alaskan Bush People" star Bear Brown. About a year later, the pair got engaged, only to split up a couple of weeks later. They briefly reconciled in the wake of a pregnancy before breaking up again, with Adams filing a restraining order against Brown. She thereby got a look behind the cameras and into the off-screen life of the Brown family. According to Adams, who appeared on the show throughout its 11th season, "Alaskan Bush People" wasn't entirely unscripted.

"None of it is real. About 10% of it is real," she told The Sun in 2020. "This show is not real." Adams went on to corroborate other accounts of "Alaskan Bush People" fudging some elements of the show presented as reality. "When I was there, the only person who lived on the mountain was Rain and Bird, and they were living in trailers," she said. "They would take us to the mountain and we would film."

She also suggested that the family togetherness and camaraderie depicted on the show didn't reflect real life. "None of the siblings get along. The only siblings that get along are Bird and Rain."