BALTIMORE — Maryland Humanities announces the release of a new collection of tools for K-12 students learning about Native American history and culture in Maryland.

Indigenous Maryland Inquiry Kits at the website https://thinkport.org/tps/indigenouskits/index.html are online resources for secondary and elementary school students and teachers that can also serve as a springboard for Maryland History Day projects.

The kits allow students to select a research topic, evaluate primary sources, and analyze themes in history. Indigenous Maryland Inquiry Kit topics range from Indigenous craftwork to the fur trade, to interactions with settlers and enslaved people, to tribal recognition.

Among the contributions from the Pocomoke Indian Nation are a series of how-to videos that show daily life, and how people at those times started a fire or crafted stone tools.
Each inquiry kit offers six sources to explore a theme in Indigenous past or present.

The Indigenous Maryland Inquiry Kits were supported by the Library of Congress, Maryland Public Television, the Maryland State Archives, and consultants from the Pocomoke Nation and Nause-Waiwash Band of Indians.

Maryland Humanities is also organizing a statewide Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition titled Spark! Places of Inspiration which highlights innovation in rural America from the perspective of the people who live there.

It will open May 17, 2025 at the College of Southern Maryland in Charles County with its final stop at UMES in Princess Anne Jan. 17 through March 1, 2026.

Photographs, interactive features, objects, videos, and augmented reality will be used to bring a multilayered experience to explore technical, social, cultural, or artistic innovation.

Each host partner will also create their own exhibit to complement the Smithsonian’s displays.

Spark! is the ninth Museum on Main Street (MoMS) project brought to small communities throughout the state by Maryland Humanities. The last local exhibit was “Water|Ways” hosted at the J. Millard Tawes Historical Museum in Crisfield in 2020. It was accompanied by “Lost Treasures of the Chesapeake” which featured Holland Island and the region’s decommissioned lighthouses.