‘Alone’ Season 10 Cast: Who Is Lee Ray DeWilde?
Lee Ray DeWilde wants to be the last one standing on this season of History Channel’s hit survival reality series Alone. The season 10 cast member is competing against nine other skilled survivalists to see who can survive the longest in a remote corner of northern Saskatchewan. While the competition will be fierce, Lee’s odds of coming out on top are good, thanks to his upbringing in the Alaskan wilderness.
Lee Ray DeWilde is part of the ‘Alone’ Season 10 cast
Lee is one of 10 survivalists fighting to survive on the shores of Reindeer Lake in northern Saskatchewan in Alone Season 10. While it’s still too early to guess who will emerge victorious, Lee seems to stand a good chance of going the distance, based on the skills he showed off in the premiere. The unflappable 59-year-old constructed a shelter, wove a fishing net, fashioned a fishing rod out of wood, and built a raft. He caught multiple fish and seems to have both the know-how and the grit to last in tough conditions.
Lee can thank his unusual upbringing for many of his skills. The son of a Native mother and a white father, he was raised in the wilderness with his 13 brothers and sisters. As children, he and his siblings learned hunting, fishing, trapping, and other skills that allowed his family to live off the land. Later, he moved to the city to get an education. He became a pilot and eventually returned to his home of Huslia, Alaska, where he started an aircraft charter business and became a high school principal. He also reconnected with his native roots.
“I’m a ninja in the woods. I was born into this. And I want to be last one out for [my kids and grandkids],” he said in the premiere.
Lee’s hope is to outlast the other Alone contestants and take home the $500,000 prize, which he plans to use to buy a larger airplane for his charter business.
Lee has a connection to a ‘Life Below Zero’ star
Lee isn’t the first person in his family to show off his survival skills on TV. While the Alone cast member hasn’t revealed too many specific details about his family, it appears his brother is Ricko DeWilde of National Geographic’s Life Below Zero.
Life Below Zero series showcases Ricko’s traditional Athabascan way of life in the interior of Alaska, as well as his efforts to pass down what he knows on to his children. On his Instagram and TikTok, Ricko occasionally posts about his family, including his brother Lee. And in interviews, he’s spoken about being raised in the Alaskan wilderness with his 13 brothers and sisters, just like Lee.
“I’m an Athabascan Indian from the North Fork of the Huslia River. I grew up 100 miles upriver from Huslia with my late mom and dad who raised 14 of us children out there in the remote wilderness,” Ricko explained in an interview with Indian Country Today.
“We lived by the seasons as far as how we traveled and what game we had available to harvest for food on the table,” he added. “My father built a lot of cabins in different areas where we lived so that we were able to either hunt, trap, or farm for foods in different areas with the changing seasons and opportunities.”
While Ricko and his siblings learned valuable skills from their parents, life wasn’t always easy.
“It ain’t all romantic, growing up like Little House in the Big Woods,” Lee shared in a 2019 Cowboys & Indians magazine profile of his brother. “We got to the city and we’re young, we’re naive, we’re easily impressed. There’s these street-smart kids who take you under their wing. It’s easy to take advantage of people like that.”
After he moved to Fairbanks as a young adult, Ricko ended up addicted to drugs and spent time in prison before turning his life around. Now, he wants to help preserve what he fears is a rapidly disappearing Native way of life.
By appearing on Life Below Zero, Ricko hopes to “shed some light on our Native culture and how important it is for us as Natives today to keep practicing our way of life,” he said. “Our traditional methods of survival and hunting are how we are here today, but I feel this ancient knowledge is in jeopardy.”
New episodes of Alone air Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on History Channel. Life Below Zero is streaming on Disney+.
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