The Birchbark House

Multiple Choice and Long Answer questions create ideal opportunities for whole-text review, unit exam, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. In Omakayas’s family, what do makazins symbolize?

A) Hunting

B) Familial love

C) “Women’s” work

D) Relationships

2. How does Omakayas’s family keep track of time?

A) Arrival of sugaring season

B) Growth of the bear cubs

C) Encroachment of white settlers

D) Changes in nature

3. What does the Birchbark house symbolize to Omakayas’s family?

A) Labor

B) Deforestation

C) Love and safety

D) Deydey’s return

4. In what way is Fishtail’s observation that the west is where dead spirits walk ominous?

A) Indigenous people are on the verge of annihilation.

B) Indigenous people will finally get land they can keep.

C) Indigenous people will lose touch with their ancestors.

D) Indigenous people will lose their harmony with nature.

5. Why is it significant that Neewo ends Nokomis’s winter food storage prayer with a cry?

A) The cry brings the family back to reality.

B) The cry demands the attention of family.

C) The cry foreshadows his death.

D) The cry symbolizes the coming winter.

6. How does Pinch shift his role within the family?

A) He soothes Andeg after his mother’s outburst.

B) He channels his energy into spreading laughter.

C) He makes his first deer kill alone in the woods.

D) He burns his foot during the sugaring season.

7. What marks Omakayas’s transition from childhood to adulthood?

A) Her grief over losing Neewo to smallpox

B) Her confrontation with the yellow dog

C) Her selflessness when caring for her sick family