Richard T. Sherman is an ethnobotanist, educator, and co-author of the ‘Indigenous Peoples and the Collaborative Stewardship of Nature: Knowledge Binds and Institutional Conflicts’, which received the prestigious John Mulvaney International Book Award.

For five years he led the Oglala Sioux Parks and Recreation Authority as Executive Director, followed by ten years as Lead Wildlife Biologist. During that time he developed the first comprehensive Tribal Fish & Wildlife Code and worked extensively to improve overgrazed reservation lands. He collaboratively developed an Indigenous Stewardship Model that is a starting point for integrating culturally appropriate solutions to issues of natural resource stewardship and conflict resolution. 

Richard has received support through the Ford Foundation, Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, Center for Collaborative Conservation, Honor the Earth through Tides Foundation, Oglala Sioux Tribe, Oglala Lakota College, First Nations Development Institute, Northwest Area Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Interior. 

Richard is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He is currently working on a book dedicated to medicinal and edible plants among the Great Plains Tribes.