"[citation needed] Richard's father, Franklin "Buster" Twiss (May 7, 1927– August 17, 1999) was an enrolled member of the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota tribe in South Dakota and was a SFC Army veteran.
His mother, Winona LaPointe is from the Sicangu Lakota from the Rosebud Indian Reservation in Norris, South Dakota, and she attended the St. Francis Indian Mission School as a young girl through high school graduation.
Richard Twiss was a founding board member of NAIITS, an Indigenous Learning Community.
www.naiits.com Twiss was a Board Member of the Christian Community Development Association,[2] founded by John M. Perkins in 1989.
[3] In 2011, he earned a doctorate in Inter-Cultural Studies (cultural anthropology, primal and folk religions and the history of Christian mission) from Asbury Theological Seminary.