Barbara A. Namias, Snipe Clan, is a member of the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne located in northern New York State .She was born and raised in the Bronx, New York as her grandparents moved to the urban area during the iron work boom of the 1950s. Barbara attended City University of New York and later Cambridge College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has a Master's degree in Adult Education. Barbara has worked in urban Indian Affairs since the early 1970s. Her work has taken her from New York to Washington DC to Boston, Massachusetts.

Barbara has held the position of Community Health Director at Boston's North American Indian Center since 1982. Under her direction, a local health care system servicing urban North American Indians is in place in eastern Massachusetts. A health service collaboration between the North American Indian Center of Boston and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gayhead at Aquinnah is an innovative model of Tribal/urban partnership providing primary care services to the greater Boston urban Indian population.

Namias is a past President of the National Council of Urban Indian Health (NCUIH) an advocacy organization for the urban Indian health programs funded under Title V of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. Throughout the United States there are 36 such 501c 3 Indian controlled organizations. Namias firmly believes that individual rights to health care should not stop at Tribal Territorial boundaries. Individual tribal members must have equal access to health care regardless of where in the United States they reside. Urban Indian community wellness is a personal goal Namias has worked toward all of her adult life.