As a faculty member at Lakehead University, Dennis McPherson was instrumental in establishing Native Studies/Indigenous Learning at Lakehead, and also in critiquing Lakehead's lack of support of Indigenous faculty and students.

He is well known for visibly protesting systemic racism at Lakehead University in 1995, first by camping on the lawn on campus near the administrative headquarters, and then by walking to Ottawa. This work also served as a research project under the title "Indian on the Lawn." Prior to this protest, he had co-created the first Indigenous philosophy course in Canada, and may have been the first Indigenous person to present a paper on Indigenous philosophy at an academic conference in Canada.

McPherson is Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), a member of the Couchiching First Nation at Fort Frances, Ontario.