Dan Beveridge was born in 1938 in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and raised in rural Saskatchewan, where his father was a United Church of Canada minister. His grandparents came to present-day Manitoba and Saskatchewan from Ontario as homesteaders in the 1870s and 1880s, and his parents were born and raised in rural Saskatchewan (Oxbow and Maple Creek). Among the communities he has lived in Saskatchewan are Mortlach, Esterhazy, and Pathlow.
Beveridge obtained a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture (BSA) and Bachelor of Arts (BA) from the University of Saskatchewan. He studied four Dakota and Lakota communities in Saskatchewan as part of his Master of Arts in sociology (1965) and during this time he met Sam Buffalo (also known as Samuel Mniyo). He later received a PhD at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He considers a major part of his education a one-year hitch-hiking trip around the world at age twenty-one. For two years (1962-1964) he served as a United Church student lay minister at Moose Woods Indian Reserve (now Whitecap Dakota First Nation) in which he led Sunday worship, social events, etc., some with Saskatoon youth groups. Beveridge partnered with Sam Buffalo in a project from 1965 to 1966 to cut and sell jack pine poles for corral rails in Saskatchewan and Montana. Beveridge has also worked as an educator, such as an instructor at the Western Co-operative College in Saskatoon and the director of extension at a community development centre in Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa. He was a programmer in university extension and a professor in science education at the University of Regina, from which he retired in 2003. He is a regular guest lecturer in Dakota history and culture classes at the First Nations University of Canada.
