Reading Comprehension

PT9 · S1 · P2 · Q12 BIA Readjustment

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During the 1940s and 1950s the United States government developed a new policy toward Native Americans, often known as “readjustment.” Because the increased awareness of civil rights in these decades helped reinforce the belief that life on reservations prevented Native Americans from exercising the rights guaranteed to citizens under the United States Constitution, the readjustment movement advocated the end of the federal government’s involvement in Native American affairs and encouraged the assimilation of Native Americans as individuals into mainstream society.

Topic

The U.S. government's "readjustment" policy toward Native Americans and the Oneida tribe's resistance in the 1950s.

Framework

Problem / Solution

Main Point

The Oneida tribe successfully resisted the U.S. government's readjustment policy in the 1950s by drawing on their historical experience and instead chose to strengthen their tribal identity and institutions. (The "Most Valuable Sentence" appears in the final paragraph: )

P1: Introduction of Policy and the Clash of Trends

The passage introduces the U.S. government's "readjustment" policy, which aimed to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream society and end federal involvement in their affairs. At the same time, Native American leaders were working to build tribal institutions and strengthen tribal identity. The conflict between assimilation and maintaining tribal identity is illustrated through the BIA's interactions with the Oneida tribe.

P2: The Government's Proposal to the Oneida

In 1956, the Bureau of Indian Affairs tried to persuade the Oneida to accept the new policy. The BIA offered them property ownership with taxation, freedom to sell land, and a lump-sum payment to replace their annual treaty annuity.

P3: Oneida’s Historical Perspective and Reasons for Refusal

The Oneida firmly rejected the proposal. Their experience with past government actions—such as land taxation leading to dispossession and speculators convincing individuals to sell their land—made them distrustful. They also opposed the lump-sum payment, fearing it might damage their legal claims to land under existing treaties.

12.

The passage suggests that the Oneida delegates viewed the Canandaigua Treaty as

  1. Correct

    a valuable safeguard of certain

    Why this is right

    Since the delegates were worried that changing the treaty might jeopardize pending land claims, they must believe that keeping the treaty as is safeguards pending land claims. The opposite of jeopardizing something is protecting it. This answer is doing a Flip the Fact style move, where we were told, "If we mess up the treaty, it could endanger our claims to land", and so they re-write that as, "If we keep the treaty, it will protect our claims to land". The language of 'rights and privileges' is weirdly new, but by saying "certain rights and privileges" we only need to know of one right or privilege that the treaty would protect to support that language. A claim to use land (i.e. a reservation, which is a parcel of land reserved for use by a Native tribe) is a certain right/privilege.

    Skill tested: Inference · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

    49% picked this

  2. the source of many past

    Opposite, if anything

    We get the feel that the delegates value the treaty and don't want to mess it up (they're worried about changing the terms of the treaty and thereby jeopardizing its validity). So saying it's a source of many past problems is an opposite for "we want to protect this and leave it unchanged".

    33% picked this

  3. a model for the type

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: model Opposite: hope to reach The delegates seemed not keen at all to strike up any new agreements with the feds, so we can't support the idea that the treaty was going to be a model for some new agreement.

    1% picked this

  4. an important step toward recognition

    Out of Scope: important step

    This answer seems like a relatively plausible belief, but it's not supported by anything in the text. We know they're worried about changing the treaty because doing so might mess up some of the protections provided by the treaty. It's too much of a stretch to go from that limited piece of knowledge to saying they view this treaty as, "an important step in recognizing their status as an independent nation". This answer is so strong that it would also imply choice (A). If a treaty were an important step in establishing that the Oneida had an independent nation, then it would also be a way to safeguard some of their rights and privileges (granting a group of people sovereign status is granting them the right/privilege to self-govern). We can never pick an answer that, if true, would imply that another answer is also correct.

    2% picked this

  5. an obsolete agreement without relevance

    Opposite

    The delegates value the treaty and don't want to change it, lest they mess up pending (i.e. current) land claims. So they definitely wouldn't consider it obsolete with no current relevance.

    14% picked this

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