Kay Kakendasot Mattena is a citizen of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation with matriarchal Ancestors among the Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi, and Prairie Band Potawatomi and serves the Association on American Indian Affairs as its Program Associate. Kay has been working with the Association in its Cultural Sovereignty Program as a contractor supporting repatriation efforts. Kay has also served as a graduate research assistant with the Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science where she aided in the early days of this new multi-million-dollar science and training center established to rethink how Western science and Native Traditional Knowledges can be weaved together to better understand our ecosystems. Kay is also conversationally fluent in Bodwewadmimwen as a Language Apprentice with the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Language Department and is currently the Primary Investigator for the Potawatomi Nation Tattoo Society where she works collaboratively with Potawatomi tattoo artists, piercers and elders to reawaken traditional Potawatomi body modification practices. Kay received her master's in archaeology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she expanded her knowledge about community-based practices with leading Indigenous scholars and allies.