Jason Younker is the assistant vice president and advisor to the president on sovereignty and government-to government relations at the University of Oregon and chief of the Coquille Indian Tribe. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the UO in 2004 and returned to Oregon after teaching at Rochester Institute of Technology for a decade. Younker received the prestigious Ely S. Parker Award in from the American Indian Science and Engineering Society in 2014 for his work with tribal governments and students in higher education. He is the past-president of the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists and is originally from Charleston, Oregon.