In Winters v. United States (1908), the Supreme Court held that the ri

Can someone help me to understand Que 2 ?

Please review this post, and let us know if you have any follow-up questions.

what's the level of this passage? seems really confusing but managed 5/8 out in 14:21. 1 and 7 seemed confusing for me,4 was just a silly mistake for me.

It is an Old post and may be it doesn't matter any more but I will go ahead and mention it anyway. I read the passage and attempted Question 1 and got it wrong. Around 3 minutes. Scrolled down (I know I should not have done this) and found this post to be the first. read it tried to understand it. Went back to the passage and got all next 7 questions right. It is unbelievable. What I am trying to say here may be I am just reading and not comprehending and the section is RC not just R. If I can develop the habit just like what GMATNinja just did here, I will nail it.

Thank you!

I finished the OG and this is one of the hardest text I have ever read. I don't understand how are these questions considered medium

GMATNinja Could you please explain why question 8 's correct answer is E ? (I chose C which is wrong)

13 mins in total, 6/8 correct, a tough one indeed

Question 8

In the first paragraph of the passage, we learn that the Winters case established that certain water rights were reserved for Native Americans, even if the original treaty didn't mention water rights at all.

Later cases cited the Winters decision to further define situations in which the federal government can reserve water rights for particular purposes.

With that in mind, take another look at (C):

The Winters doctrine deals with reserving water rights for a particular purpose, not with setting aside land for a particular purpose. The land in question (a Native American reservation), has ALREADY been set aside. It's just that this land would be "useless" if the Native American inhabitants of the land did not have the right to use the water flowing through it.

The Winters case gave Native Americans those necessary water rights, but has nothing to do with setting aside land for a particular purpose. For this reason, you can eliminate (C).


The Winters case and later decisions definitely expanded the federal government's right to reserve water in certain situations. In particular, the government could reserve water rights even when the original agreement "did not mention water rights" -- in other words, even if the government didn't explicitly grant water rights at the time of a treaty, it could later say that those rights exist if the government "intended to reserve water as well as land when establishing the reservation."

This means that the government can, in certain conditions, implicitly reserve water for certain purposes, even if those water rights were not explicitly written down in the original treaty or agreement.

(E) is the correct answer to question 8.

I hope that helps!

Dear VeritasKarishma AjiteshArun VeritasPrepHailey GMATNinja MartyTargetTestPrep DmitryFarber

Why is Q4 choice E. wrong?

The passage mentions that the treaty established Fort Belknap Indian Reservation.
However, for the Rio Grande peublo, no treaty, statute, or executive order has ever designated or withdrawn the pueblos from public lands as American Indian reservations. But what constitutes an American Indian reservation is a question of practice, not of legal definition, and the pueblos have always been treated as reservations by the United States. So, pueblos must be considered to have become reservations.

One reservation was established by treaty; the other did not. Here this is legal distinction.
Why is this thinking wrong?

Hi varotkorn,

This is a primary purpose question. Option E does not communicate the main point that the author of the passage wants to convey, which is to show how (the legal basis for...) some American Indian tribes managed to get water rights.

The one common underlying theme of the paragraphs is water rights of American Indians and how they were established.
Option (E) talks about legal distinction between American Indian reservations. The critical 'water rights' is missing and there is no focus on 'legal distinctions'.

Hello community!

I studied this passage for two days, and this is how I break down the passage and questions

Hope it helps someone who's struggling with this passage.

I think I deserve Kudos if you don't mind

Thank you!

This question threw me off - I was certain it couldn't be C because the criteria were relevant to Winters, and Winters never dealt with the Rio Grande pueblos... Can you provide further explanation as to why we can apply the criteria to the Rio Grande pueblos?

I feel like in general this passage was a tough one to read/follow. I found it unclear whether the passage was using "reserved waters" to specifically mean water that is reserved for Indian Reservations, or water "reserved" for federal use. To me it doesn't make sense that they would use the word "reserved" for anything other than reservations. The whole point of a reservation is that the land (and subsequently the water) is "reserved". To say that the federal courts want to reserve water makes it sound like they're trying to...well, RESERVE water as in for a reservation. Not for federal purposes.

Hi sydlyisaacs,

I think that is the point GMATNinja made in that post. If A, B, and C were the only criteria for establishing a reservation’s water rights, then there would be no legal basis for the water rights of the Rio Grande pueblos, because, as you also pointed out, those (three) criteria did not apply to the Rio Grande pueblos.

It's one of the toughest passages I have ever read. How is it really considered a medium passage?

So much content, so much verbal, it's crazy.

Can someone explain question number #8?

I chose (C) and got it wrong.

The passage talks about the criteria in line 14-20, why not C?