Tribal Nations Honors Scholars: Future Leaders in Healthcare
Pictured above: Kiya Jackson (’25) and Tiana Gilliland (’25)
The broken promises that fill so much of our nation’s relationship with Native Americans and other vulnerable populations includes a health care system that has failed them. The problems stretch from underfunding, understaffing, and inaccessibility to cultural and social barriers.
Honors College Native Scholars and graduating seniors Kiya Jackson and Tiana Gilliland aim to change this — with a determination that matches the challenges.
Kiya Jackson
“I’ve wanted to be a dentist for as long as I can remember.”
Kiya Jackson is an enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation (Three Affiliated Tribes) in North Dakota. Her family has lived in the Rogue Valley for five decades. Her grandfather worked as a dentist in Ashland for 40 years and she grew up sitting in a dentist chair, thinking “this is one of the coolest things.”
After graduating from South Medford High School, Kiya headed to Carroll College in Montana until ill health brought her back home. She enrolled at SOU and found her way to the Honors College, where she was also selected as a Tribal Nations Honors Scholar. She majored in biology and held on to her dream of becoming a dentist. Kiya is also a scholar athlete on SOU’s beach volleyball team.
This past year has been pivotal, Kiya says.
“I’ve gotten to know a lot more people, attend conferences, become comfortable in my tribal identity, especially as a female Native American college student. I’ve learned how important it is to advocate for tribal healthcare, especially in dentistry, a largely unrecognized backbone of good health.”
Kiya also embraces the significance of being Native American and female in STEM, which alone is a rarity, in her academics, leadership, employment, and out of classroom experiences. Kiya is graduating with a degree in biology, and minors in chemistry and business administration. For her capstone project, she did a literature review on the possible contributing factors that lead to the development of Alzheimer’s disease and where treatments can go in the future. She “took the lead” as they say in the Honors College in organizing a Wesley Foundation funded trip for students from the American Samoa and Hawai’i, Native American students, and Honors College Scholars to the Yurok reservation in northern California for a tour of the lower Klamath river in traditional dugout canoes led by guides from the Yurok tribe. She also worked with Tiana on another Take the Lead project delivering dental hygiene kits to children in need within our local communities.
Pictures above: SOU students tour the lower Klamath River with Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, September 2025
Kiya is a leader on campus as well. Works as the Native Raider Ambassador for SOU’s Admissions office and SOU’s Native Nations Liaison office. She also serves as secretary for the Native American Student Union (NASU).
Finally, Kiya continues to develop valuable work experience working as a dental intern at her family’s dental office, Ashland Dental and Oral Health.
Tiana Gilliland
“Healthcare administration and policy is my passion.”
At age 21, Tiana Gilliland is already a model for the motto, “Leave no stone unturned.” She was the first in her family to graduate from high school and go to college. After graduating from Grants Pass High School, Tiana entered the Honors College at SOU, where she hit the ground running, relentlessly pursuing as many experiences as she could in her four years of study.
Like Kiya, Tiana is also a Tribal Nations Honors Scholar in the Honors College. She is an enrolled member in the Shasta Indian Nation. Tiana recently graduated with a degree in both healthcare administration and business administration, with minors in health promotion and ethics, and a certificate in management of human resources. She also served as the president of the International Student Union club, president of Rotaract, and the treasurer of the Native American Student Union. This past year, she also served as student body president for the Associated Students of Southern Oregon University.
Tiana’s reach extends beyond SOU to nurture her passions around healthcare. She worked at SOU’s Student Health and Wellness Center as the front desk and scheduler receptionist. Additionally, she worked as an intern for both the Rogue Valley Manor which is a retirement community and Mercy Flights, the only non-profit mobile healthcare organization in Oregon. In that organization, she was able to have hands-on training and learning “from the back of the ambulance,” and last year, she worked as a finance intern with the organization.
Tiana’s achievements also include participating in a yearlong exchange program at the University of Nottingham in England. There, she studied philosophy and ethics while also participating in the SkydivingTeam, Women’s American Flag Football, and the Women’s Investing and Trading Society.
“Taking the lead”
Tiana and Kiya are both rightfully proud of their joint Honors College “Take the Lead” project. Partnering with the Ashland Rotary Club’s weekly backpack program for low-income students, Tiana and Kiya added dental hygiene “goodie bags” to the backpacks that also contain food for the child and their family for the weekend. Kiya worked with Dr. Brian Kitchell, who generously donated all of the supplies needed to create the hygiene kits: toothbrushes, tooth paste, floss, and a toy for each bag. Tiana provided the logistics through her long-standing relationship with the Rotary Club of Ashland as president of SOU’s Rotaract club. The bags also included a note with a QR code linked to an English/Spanish YouTube video on how to brush teeth properly. They distributed over 100 bags.
Pictured above: National Council of Urban Indian Health Conference Registration; Kiya and Tiana with dental hygiene kits, or “goodie bags” with new toothbrushes and other dental hygiene supplies for kids
More Opportunities Than One Can Count
It is hard to count all the ways the Honors College supports student learning, Kiya and Tiana will tell you. From belonging to, and becoming a part of a small cohort of Honors Scholars in a larger university, to studying democracy and community outreach in other countries, the list is large and long. For example, Tiana went to India with SOU’s Democracy Project, hosted by the Honors College, and she went to Jamaica this summer also with the Democracy Project. In the fall of 2024 both Tiana and Kiya traveled with members of the Honors College as invited guests of the Rotary Club of Ashland to Guanajuato, Mexico to visit villages where the Rotary Clubs of Ashland and Guanajuato had joined forces to support community water projects. Tiana and Kiya were able to see first hand what it looks like and the collaboration it takes to bring two Rotary Clubs together in support of ethical international community projects that center the communities themselves in an effort to make safe drinking water available in more homes in rural areas in the State of Guanajuato, Mexico, where both Ashland and SOU have sister city relationships.
The opportunity to attend the annual National Council of Urban Indian Health conference in Washington, DC this April, stands out for both Tiana and Kiya. This trip was made possible through support from the Honors College and SOU’s Native Nations Liaison’s office. For three days, they had the chance to network with professionals with extensive experience advocating for, and working on issues critical to Native American healthcare. “I learned how much there is a network that shares my interest in policy,” says Tiana. For Kiya, a trip to visit the cemetery located on the grounds where the Carlisle Indian Industrial School once stood was profound. This visit brought home the stakes “for my people,” Kiya said.
Pictured above: Cemetery at Carlile, Pennsylvania, site of the first Indian Boarding School, which operated from 1879 to 1918. Children who died while attending the school are buried in this cemetery
What Lies Ahead
Kiya has been accepted into the Wy’East dental program at OHSU, a post baccalaureate program for Native American students pursuing a dental career. From there she will head to dental school. Blessed with ongoing scholarship support from her tribe, when she earns her Doctorate of Dentistry, she aims to give back at a brand new clinic on the Fort Berthold Reservation in N. Dakota where her family’s history began.
This fall, Tiana will be an incoming Masters in Health Administration candidate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, MD. She continues to be committed to tackling the hurdles — from the top, down — that the least-served by today’s public health care system face every day.
Call Out Quote: “Everything I’ve done the past years has filled me with more ambition and more knowledge than I ever imagined,” says Kiya. “I’m going to use my experience and my identity to flip the script and help people, native or not.”
Call Out Quote: “Challenges for me are not barriers but opportunities,” Tiana explains.
By Barbara Cervone, SOU Honors College Advisory Board
