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.