Week 5 Discussion — The Record, the Voice, and an Island — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

A federal law can tell you what a program promised. A family's account can tell you what the program did to them. This week you read termination, relocation, the occupation of Alcatraz, self-determination, and survivance, and you read the archive's E4 excerpt beside the dated record.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: The Indian Relocation Act of 1956 authorized a vocational training program for adult Native Americans living on or near reservations. The archive's E4 excerpt (illustrative) comes from a man whose family moved to a city under that program in the late 1950s: the office promised job training and an apartment, the job lasted four months, his mother found the Indian center, and he ends, "We are still here." If you could keep only one of the two, the law or the account, to teach someone what relocation was, which would you keep, and what would that person miss? Use termination or relocation, survivance, and the field's question of what a record leaves out, and give the other source its strongest case.

Option B: Indians of All Tribes occupied Alcatraz Island from November 1969 to June 1971. The occupation ended in June 1971 without the island changing hands, yet the National Park Service states that afterward the official policy of termination ended and self-determination became official policy, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs describes the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 as following the activism of the 1960s and 1970s. Was the occupation a success, a loss, or both? Use Red Power, self-determination, and termination, say what you would count as success, and give the other view its strongest case.

There is no single right answer. A law and an account answer different questions, and an action can lose its ground and still change policy; pick the option you care about, and show us your reasoning.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Working on your own: this version of the discussion is written entirely from your own reasoning, in your own words.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, say which source you would keep, the 1956 law or the E4 account, and what a reader would miss without the other; for Option B, say whether the occupation of Alcatraz was a success, a loss, or both, and what you count as success.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (termination, relocation, Red Power, self-determination, survivance) correctly, and speak of Native nations in the present tense.
• Give your judgment, with a reason, and give the other source or view its strongest case.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: point out what a classmate's chosen source leaves out, offer the strongest case for the view they did not take, or name a dated event from this week that supports or complicates their reading. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option A and would keep E4. The law tells me the program offered vocational training, but only the account shows the job lasted four months and that the family found each other at the Indian center. The other side has a point: without the 1956 law I could not date the move or know it was a federal program with a federal goal. I would still look for the relocation office's own records to see what training was offered.

Notice how it names what each source leaves out, keeps the history plain, gives the other side its due, and says what it would still check. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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