#12 - Concept Reference, Must Be True, Subject Perspective

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (A).

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):


This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[reop6780]

I was completely lost at the question number #12. First of all I'm confused of the lines 51 to 53. Just making sure that "the offer of a lump-sum payment" is part of Canandaigua Treaty. Then, how does the "changing of the terms of a treaty" jeopardize the pending claims? I mean the passage did not discuss about such claims earlier. While i didn't and still struggle to understand these lines, all i grasped was the Oneida delegates' negative decision for the treaty based upon failure in the 19th century. Hence, the answer A that states possitive context about the Canandaigua Treaty does not appeal to me at all. (Plus, the reason why i'm obsessed with the lines of 51-53 is due to the detailed answer at the back)

[David Boyle]

I was completely lost at the question number #12. First of all I'm confused of the lines 51 to 53. Just making sure that "the offer of a lump-sum payment" is part of Canandaigua Treaty. Then, how does the "changing of the terms of a treaty" jeopardize the pending claims? I mean the passage did not discuss about such claims earlier. While i didn't and still struggle to understand these lines, all i grasped was the Oneida delegates' negative decision for the treaty based upon failure in the 19th century. Hence, the answer A that states possitive context about the Canandaigua Treaty does not appeal to me at all. (Plus, the reason why i'm obsessed with the lines of 51-53 is due to the detailed answer at the back)

Hello reop6780,

The lump-sum payment looks like a substitute for what the treaty was offering, the $0.52.
If, say, you have a contract with somebody, and you change the contract, maybe various claims related to the contract might be jeopardized. (E.g., people will say, "Hey, that's not the same contract as it used to be! I'm not liable for anything now!") Same with treaties, perhaps.
If the Oneida thought that jeopardizing claims was bad, and losing their $0.52 was worse than getting $60,000, then maybe the Treaty had a positive side for them, so A is correct.

Hope this helps,
David

[reop6780]

I'm still confused. So under "readjustment," there is "the Canandaigua Treaty," and lump-sum payment is substitute for the "Canandaigua Treaty"? - since you wrote that $0.52 in perpetuity is part of "Canandaigua Treaty."

The lines of 51-53 literally says that any change of a treaty might jeopardize the treaty itself. What I'm confused of is the "change." What is this "changing the terms of a treaty" referring to? Was lump-sum part of the Canandaigua Tready? (opposed to what you said), so the Oneida rejected readjustment (and the treaty) due to the lump-sum payment?
From what I understand, if the lump-sum was substitute for the perpetuity of the Canadaigua Treaty, there is no reason for the Oneida to refuse the readjustment in which the treaty was included.

Here is what I gathered when I was reading this passage. If I'm missing something so that I'm still really confused, please point this out for me.

Readjustment was not "sold" to the Oneida due to historical reason. That is, the Oneida does not like part of the treaty, the Canandaigua Treaty, under the readjustment.
My problem is is then why do "the Oneida delegates view the Canandaigua Treaty as a valuable safeguard of certain Oneida rights and privileges"? (question 12)

[KelseyWoods]

Hi reop6780!

The change to the treaty that the author refers to is accepting the $60,000 lump sum "in lieu of" (or, instead of) the $0.52 in perpetuity. If they switch from the $0.52 in perpetuity to the $60,000 lump sum, they worry that change could jeopardize the other terms of the treaty.

The Canandaigua Treaty was an older treaty that was already in place when the BIA tried to convince the Oneida to accept the readjustment (in fact, this isn't mentioned in the passage, but the Canandaigua Treaty was signed in 1794 after the American Revolution). So basically, since this was the standing treaty that the Native Americans had with the U.S. government, they didn't want to do anything that would jeopardize those terms. So they didn't want to accept any type of change to the treaty (the $60,000 lump sum instead of the $0.52 in perpetuity they'd been receiving under the Canandaigua Treaty) because it might affect other part os the treaty which they considered valuable.

That leads us to answer choice (A). The Oneida considered the Canandaigua Treaty valuable and important to their rights and privileges and so they did not want to risk changing any part of it in order to accept the readjustment the government was proposing in the 1950s.

Hope this clears things up!

Best,
Kelsey

[reop6780]

That cleared everything! !! Thank you so much Kelsey!

[Legalistic]

Hi reop6780!

The change to the treaty that the author refers to is accepting the $60,000 lump sum "in lieu of" (or, instead of) the $0.52 in perpetuity. If they switch from the $0.52 in perpetuity to the $60,000 lump sum, they worry that change could jeopardize the other terms of the treaty.

The Canandaigua Treaty was an older treaty that was already in place when the BIA tried to convince the Oneida to accept the readjustment (in fact, this isn't mentioned in the passage, but the Canandaigua Treaty was signed in 1794 after the American Revolution). So basically, since this was the standing treaty that the Native Americans had with the U.S. government, they didn't want to do anything that would jeopardize those terms. So they didn't want to accept any type of change to the treaty (the $60,000 lump sum instead of the $0.52 in perpetuity they'd been receiving under the Canandaigua Treaty) because it might affect other part os the treaty which they considered valuable.

That leads us to answer choice (A). The Oneida considered the Canandaigua Treaty valuable and important to their rights and privileges and so they did not want to risk changing any part of it in order to accept the readjustment the government was proposing in the 1950s.

Hope this clears things up!

Best,
Kelsey

Hello Kelsey,

Thank you for that explanation. What is worrying me a little bit is that there is no background information given about the Canandaigua Treaty. The author begins talking about it quite randomly in lines 31-21. When I was reading the passage, I was a little skeptical as to why they were talking about Canandaigua Treaty while discussing readjustment, but I then assumed that Canandaigua Treaty was probably a Treaty incorporated with readjustment. Especially because readjustment was defined in lines 9-10 as a movement, not a specific treaty or contract itself. I thought there would be treaties under readjustment. Anyway, my question here is that how are we supposed to know then that Canandaigua Treaty was from the past, and not affiliated with readjustment, if it wasn't explicitly mentioned in the passage. Because I think if I had an idea that Canandaigua Treaty was one from the past, I would've thought differently about the answer choices in Question 12. However, because I was under the impression that the Canandaigua Treaty is affiliated with readjustment, and the Oneida rejected the Canandaigua Treaty, they couldn't have seen the Canandaigua Treaty under a positive light at all. Hence, I quickly disregarded answer choice A.

[Paul Marsh]

Hi Legalistic! You're right that the passage tells us very little about the Canandaigua Treaty. It's only mentioned twice, first when the passage says: "The Oneida were then offered a one-time lump-sum payment of $60,000 in lieu of the $0.52 annuity guaranteed in perpetuity to each member of the tribe under the Canandaigua Treaty." Just from the language used in that one sentence (especially the parts I bolded), we can infer that it was a prior treaty that was already in effect at the time. The word "guaranteed" is past tense, so we know that the $0.52 annuity was guaranteed at some point in the past - the rest of the sentence tells us that happened under the Canandaigua Treaty. So we know it was already in existence.

Now that doesn't tell us when the Treaty was from, or if it was associated with readjustment or not. But we don't need to know any of that, since the treaty is referred to one more time: "the offer of a lump-sum payment was unanimously opposed by the Oneida delegates, who saw that changing the terms of a treaty might jeopardize the many pending land claims based upon the treaty." This sentence tells us that the Oneida valued the land claims provided by the Canandaigua Treaty, and didn't want to lose them. So we know the Treaty protected at least some valuable rights and privileges.

In general for these kind of Must be True questions, don't try to make assumptions beyond what the passage provides! All we have to go off of here are the two sentences where the Treaty is discussed, so the answer is bound to be contained in those two sentences. Hope that helps!