The Montana Northern Cheyenne lead the 8th Annual Walk the Portage Path event, part of the North American First People’s Day events on Sunday, October 1, 2023. The walk started at Portage Path CLC, and it ended at the Summit County Historical Society’s John Brown house.
The Montana Northern Cheyenne lead the 8th Annual Walk the Portage Path event, part of the North American First People’s Day events on Sunday, October 1, 2023. The walk started at Portage Path CLC, and it ended at the Summit County Historical Society’s John Brown house.

Members of the Northern Cheyenne Nation of Montana led a one-mile walk of the Portage Path in Akron last Sunday as part of North American First People’s Day. The walk began at Portage Path Community Learning Center and ended at the Summit County Historical Society’s John Brown House on Diagonal Road.

Following the walk, which was sponsored by The Portage Path Collaborative, representatives of the Northern Cheyenne Nation of Montana drummed and danced on the lawn. Inside the house, attendees could visit the exhibit titled Surveying our Past: A Modern Marking of One of the Nation’s Oldest Paths, which explains how the Portage Path was identified along with information about the Peter B. Jones’ sculptures that help mark it.

The celebration was sparked by a resolution presented to Akron City Council in 2018 by students from The Lippman School, which has a longstanding exchange relationship with the Northern Cheyenne Nation of Montana. The day is intended to “honor indigenous history, life and culture.” Summit County Council extended the celebration to the rest of the county in 2019.

Walk the Portage Path in pictures

Editor-in-Chief (she/her)
Zake has deep roots in Northeast Ohio journalism. She was the managing editor for multimedia and special projects at the Akron Beacon Journal, where she began work as a staff photographer in 1986. Over a 20-year career, Zake worked in a variety of roles across departments that all help inform her current role as Signal Akron's editor in chief. Most recently, she was a journalism professor and student media adviser at Kent State University, where she worked with the next generation of journalists to understand public policy, environmental reporting, data and solutions reporting. Among her accomplishments was the launch of the Kent State NewsLab, an experiential and collaborative news commons that connects student reporters with outside professional partners.