He was born in St. Louis, Saskatchewan, Canada, on September 8, 1921, the son of Olive Elizabeth McDougall, a French Métis mother and William Robert Adams, an English Métis (Anglo-Metis) father.

Adams became the first Métis in Canada to gain his PhD after studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 1966.

[1] He returned to Canada and became a prominent Métis activist, contributing regularly to newspapers and magazines and appearing on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio shows.

[3] Adams' intellectual influences include Malcolm X whom he saw lecture at Berkeley, and the general radical environment of that institution during the 1960s.

He was the maternal great grandson of Louis Riel's lieutenant Maxime Lepine who fought in the North-West Rebellion of 1885.