Peter Francis Nabokov was born in 1940 in Auburn, New York to parents Nicolas and Constance Holladay Nabokov. He attended Columbia University, where he received a Bachelor's of the Arts before continuing to Goddard College for his M.A. (ethnic studies and language arts), and University of California, Berkeley, for his Ph.D. (anthropology).

Throughout his career as a writer and anthropologist, he worked with various indigenous populations, including the Crow, Hopi and Dakota Tribes and the Navajo Nation. He is the author of Indian Running, Native American Testimony: From Prophecy to the Present; Native American Architecture; A Forest of Time: American Indian Ways of History; How the World Moves: The Odyssey of an American Indian Family; and The Origin Myth of Acoma Pueblo.

He joined the staff of UCLA in 1996, and currently holds the position of professor of American Indian Studies and World Arts and Cultures.