Schneebaum's father Jacob (known as Yankle) emigrated to America from Poland just before World War I, in which he served in order to get U.S. citizenship.

After hitch-hiking from New York to Peru, he lived with the Harakmbut people for seven months, and said he had joined the tribe in cannibalism on one occasion.

[5] Until 1970 he was the designer at Tiber Press, then in 1973 he embarked on his third overseas trip to Papua, then known as Irian Jaya, where he lived with the Asmat people on the south-western coast.

[6] Schneebaum spent the final years of his life in Westbeth Artists Community, an artists' commune in Greenwich Village, New York City, also home to Merce Cunningham and Diane Arbus, and died in 2005 in Great Neck, New York of Parkinson's disease.

[4] Schneebaum received a Master of Arts in anthropology at The New School in New York City, and another from Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont.