Sheryl Doherty was born in Saskatoon, Canada in the '70s and adopted at ten months. She is Cree and Irish and is part of the Sixties Scoop, a generation of Indigenous children who were adopted out to non-Indigenous people for the purpose of assimilation. While growing up, she was denied her Cree heritage. However, when she started university, she began learning about Indigenous people's histories across Canada, cultural and intergenerational trauma, and about the alarming numbers of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in North America. Sheryl finished her Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Education, and Master of Arts, then began her lifelong passion of teaching about Indigenous literature.