Courtney Little Axe is Northern Cheyenne, Absentee Shawnee, and Seminole. She grew up on the Northern Cheyenne reservation and in Tecumseh/Little Axe, Oklahoma. She has an AS in Natural Sciences and a Records and Information Management Certificate from Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. She also has a BA in Anthropology and a Forensic Studies Certificate from the University of Montana (UM). During her undergrad, Courtney worked as an intern in the UM Anthropological Curation Facility, where she began her career journey in repatriation. Following her time at UM, she was selected as a Native American fellow for the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. She was then employed at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, California for three years as the Repatriation Assistant. She is now the Repatriation Coordinator and Collections Manager at the University of Montana (UM). Her skill set has helped create procedures in collaboration with numerous tribes across the country to center the importance of cultural protocols for proper handling and care of cultural belongings. She has dedicated much of her adult life to repatriation and Indigenizing heritage collection care with hope that her work will help rebuild the framework for what repatriation and collections care could look like.