Canaries, Frogs and the National Congress of American Indians:
What's Realistic? Felix Cohen, author of the original Handbook
of Federal Indian Law, played a major role in the Indian New
Deal (aka, Indian Reorganization Act) to end the Dawes Act
allotment era. In 1953, the year he died, he wrote, "Like the
miner's canary, the Indian marks the shifts from fresh air to
poison gas in our political atmosphere." What he meant was that
attacks on Indian self-determination are a sign of danger to
everybody's freedom. Canaries are sensitive to poisonous gasses;
they were companions for miners in the days before detection
devices: When a canary stopped singing and started to sway on
its perch, the miners knew it was time to get out of the mine.
What threatens the canary threatens the miners… and the canary
knows first. Cohen worked within the Interior Department
Solicitor's Office; but he stretched legal doctrines of federal
domination (e.g., "wardship") to support Indian rights. His
emphasis was on government's respo