Maryland Humanities Provides Free Educational Resources On Maryland's Indigenous History

Maryland Humanities is providing a new collection of tools called Indigenous Maryland Inquiry Kits for kindergarten through grade 12 students to learn about Maryland’s indigenous history and culture.

Inquiry kits are virtual resources for the classroom 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. Maryland Humanities, in partnership with the Library of Congress’ Teaching with Primary Sources program, has created more than 200 inquiry kits on a variety of topics.

Each of the new Indigenous Maryland Inquiry Kits offers six sources — drawn from the Maryland State Archives, the Enoch Pratt Free Library, the Library of Congress, universities and other institutions — to explore a theme. Elementary school inquiry kit topics include craftwork, the fur trade, and living off of nature. For older students, topics range from language to interactions with settlers and enslaved people to tribal recognition.

The Maryland Humanities team worked directly with tribal consultants from the Pocomoke Indian Nation and Nause-Waiwash Band of Indians on the Indigenous Maryland Inquiry Kits.

“We don't know a lot of things about what happened because what we know is from the eyes and the pen of the people conquering,” said consultant Cheryl Doughty of Pocomoke Indian Nation. “We have to be careful how we interpret those sketches, paintings, maps, treaties even. We have to be careful that we look at those pieces of information from a critical point of view.”

Chief Donna Abbott — project consultant and the first female chief of the Nause-Waiwash Band of Indians — talked about her hope for the new inquiry kits. “I would like for the students to take away from this project not only learning the past, but learning the present,” she said.

“There are so many people that still associate Native American tribes and indigenous people in a historic way, in a historic view,” Abbott added. “We don't live in longhouses. We have indoor plumbing. We have all those things. We've been to school. So, learn both parts of it, the past, present and what's going to happen in the future.”

To explore the Indigenous Maryland Inquiry Kits, visit www.thinkport.org/tps/indigenouskits.