"[3] DeLaCruz grew up on the Quinault Reservation in Taholah Grays Harbor County, Washington, the eldest of 10 children.
He fished in the summers with his grandfather on the Quinault River, drove a school bus and worked at the local lumber mill.
He participated in the 1970 confrontations at Fort Lawton in Seattle, Washington that led to the founding of the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation and the Daybreak Star Cultural Center.
[3] From 1984 until his death, DeLaCruz served as chair of public policy at the Center for World Indigenous Studies.
After his 2000 death from a heart attack,[3] he was memorialized by the establishment of the Joe DelaCruz Center for Advanced Studies in Tribal Government, a project of Northwest Indian Applied Research Institute (NIARI) at The Evergreen State College.