Catherine June was born in 1912 in Sykeston, North Dakota, to Martin Edward and Susan Monahan Kremer. After graduating from Sykeston High School, she attended the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul. She graduated from North Dakota State University and received her M.A. from Columbia University in New York City. She taught school in Sykeston for five years prior to being hired as a teacher by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1938, where she met her future husband, Stanley Lyman. The couple married in August 1942 and subsequently had two children, Mary Lee and Martin Edward. The Lymans worked for the BIA for more than twenty years, including stints at Fort Duchesne, Utah, and Fort Peck, Montana. Stanley was superintendent of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1973, when American Indian Movement militants occupied portions of the reservation at Wounded Knee. After Stanley's death in 1979, June was instrumental in getting the eyewitness account of the occupation published as "Wounded Knee 1973." She also continued to work as a consultant in the field of education.