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The 2023 Cherokee Nation elections will be held on June 3, 2023, with a runoff on July 8 if necessary. One of the candidates for Cherokee Nation District 12, incumbent Dora Smith Patzkowski, was our guest in COMMUNITY CONNECTION on Tuesday.

 

Dora has served as Cherokee Nation Tribal Councilor for District 12 since 2019. In that time, District 12 has benfitted with expansions in medical services and resources in both Ochelata and in Nowata. The new Community Cultural Center in Dewey was just opened a few weeks ago in Dewey.

 

Dora is very happy to announce that Cherokee Nation has issued grant monies to the police, fire and other other first responder agancies in the towns within Distric 12, and she looks forward to those partneships working well together in the future.

 

Councilor Patzkowski invites everyone to her event Friday, May 26, at 6pm at the Bartlesville Community Center. She will be joined with Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr, Deputy Chief Bryan Warner and Treasurer Tommy WIldcat.

 

 

ABOUT DORA:

 

Born to Cherokee and Caucasian parents, Dora Smith Patzkowski was raised in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in the Cherokee Nation. 

 

With a full-blood Cherokee mother, who was also a Cherokee Language teacher long before the Cherokee Nation established their language program, Dora grew up understanding the struggle of the Cherokee people to make their way in a modern society which maintains many opposing views of Indian people. 

 

Dora understands both the need for Cherokee people to excel in modern, Eurocentric society, while maintaining traditional Cherokee identity and values.

 

The two racial backgrounds of Dora’s parents provided her with invaluable insight of the perseverance required to prosper as a family, and understand that different ethnicities can coexist with love, and without prejudice.

 

From Dora’s earliest age, her mother was a member of the Bartlesville Indian Women’s Club where Dora participated in events, absorbing a broad native culture, and forming warm friendships with elders. 

 

Dora is the wife of Wes Patzkowski and in May of 2023, they will celebrate 44 years of marriage. 

 

The mother of two children, Joshua and Amy, Dora is the proud grandmother of six grandchildren.