Barney grew up in Buffalo Springs, New Mexico, where her mother took her to classical music recitals in Gallup, instilling an early love of music in Geri. She began teaching herself to play the guitar, using her uncle’s guitar when he was not at home. In middle school, she took up the trumpet and then played tuba with the Navajo Nation marching band, eventually joining the Gallup Symphony Orchestra.

Barney is also a visual artist, having studied graphic design and printmaking as well as music at the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. There, she began playing the Native American flute at a time when that instrument was still viewed in the traditional way, as an instrument only for men to play. She graduated from the Kansas City Art Insitute in printmaking, then made her way to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she now resides.

She was selected by ethnomusicologists from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History to be one of the artists on Heartbeat: Voices of First Nations Women (Smithsonian Folkways 40415).