He is the son of Eva and Raymond Sensmeier. He was raised in Yakutat, Alaska, a Tlingit fishing town of about 600 residents. The community can be reached by air (366 miles southeast of Anchorage), but has no connecting road.
His family name contains two different German words. Sense and Meier. Sense means Scythe, Meier means milk farmer, so his ancestors have been German milk farmers which most probably owns a farm named "Sensenhof" or did produce also scythes.