Rickey Butch Walker is a native son of the Warrior Mountains descending from Cherokee, Creek, and Celtic (Scots Irish) people; he is a member of the Echota Cherokee Tribe of Alabama. He attended the University of Northern Alabama. While at UNA, Walker worked part time as a biological aide with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)-Forestry, Fisheries, and Wildlife. On June 2, 1972, he graduated from UNA; four days later, he was drafted into the United States Army. Since he was enrolled in a Masters Degree program on a stipend from TVA in the Tennessee Cooperative Fisheries Unit at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee, he joined the Tennessee Army National Guard on August 12, 1972. He was accepted  into the Tennessee Military Academy and was commissioned a second lieutenant as an infantry rifle platoon leader on June 29, 1974. He was honorably discharged August 11, 1978.

Rickey Butch Walker earned post graduate degrees in science, education, and supervision from TTU, Athens State, Alabama A&M, and UNA. He started work with the Lawrence County Board of Education in 1976 and taught science for 11 years at Speake High School. Starting in 1987, he served as Director of Lawrence County Schools’ Indian Education Program and later Oakville Indian Mounds Education Center; the Indian program was awarded a National Showcase Project by the U.S. Department of Education in 1995. He served as Alabama Indian representative on a grant reading committee for the Department of Education in Washington, DC.  In 1994, he was selected to serve on the National Trail of Tears Committee from Alabama with Poarch Creek Chief Eddie Tullis and historian Richard Sheridan. While with Lawrence County Schools, he secured funds to complete the Oakville Indian Mounds Museum and purchase some 120 acres of land containing two ancient Indian mounds. In 2009, he retired after some 33 years with Lawrence County Schools.

In 1966, Rickey Butch Walker began working to help establish the Sipsey Wilderness Area which was dedicated in 1975. For a few years, he wrote weekly articles called Bankhead Back Trails for the Moulton Advertiser. In 1992, he teamed up with Lamar Marshall to begin the Bankhead Monitor to protect the sacred Indian Tomb Hollow, Kinlock Rock Shelter, and High Town Path which became designated historic districts and Traditional Cultural Properties by the U.S. Forest Service. Rickey Butch served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bankhead Monitor, Wild Alabama, and Wild South from its beginning in 1992 until it merged with the Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project in 2006. Walker remains an advocate for protection and preservation of historic sites in the Warrior Mountains and the Tennessee River Valley.

Rickey Butch Walker is currently a writer and author of several books: Appalachian Indians of the Warrior Mountains; Appalachian Indian Trails of the Chickamauga: Lower Cherokee Settlements; Celtic Indian Boy of Appalachia: A Scots Irish Cherokee Childhood; Chickasaw Chief George Colbert: His Family & His Country; Doublehead: Last Chickamauga Cherokee Chief; Cotton Was King and many more. He anticipates Cotton Was King: Volume II will be published in August 2018. He is currently working on a series of cotton plantation books on northwest Alabama.