The Alaskan Bush People Family Standing Strong

After mom Ami survived a battle with lung cancer, the Brown family left Alaska and rebuilt their lives in a new patch of wild. How the crisis brought them even closer together

- Patrick Gomez

“This is a gift from God,” Ami Brown says as a few of her seven children enjoy an overcast afternoon on their northern Washington homestead, watching a spider inch through the underbrush. It’s a small moment worth savoring. Two years ago Brown—one of the stars of the Discovery reality show Alaskan Bush People—was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and given a 3 percent chance of survival. “It was very scary,” she says. “But I never gave up hope.”

Her cancer is now in remission, but the crisis changed Brown’s family profoundly. For decades Ami, 55, and her husband, Billy, 66, had lived with their children—sons Matt, 36, Bam, 34, Bear, 31, Gabe, 29, and Noah, 26, and daughters Bird, 24, and Rain, 16—in the Alaskan bush, weathering brutal winters and even bear attacks but relishing the freedom that came from living offthe grid. Thanks to their reality series (which returns for season 9 on March 3), the family became unlikely celebrities. Then, in the spring of 2017, Ami, who particularly cherished life in the wilderness, received her diagnosis, and the Browns made the hard decision to leave “Browntown”—their Alaskan outpost—for Southern California, so that Ami could be treated at UCLA Medical Center.