COIN — Commonwealth of Indigenous Nations
The Council of Indigenous Nations (COIN) exists to protect, preserve, and promote the sovereignty, culture, and self-determination of Indigenous Peoples across the Americas and beyond. Rooted in ancestral knowledge and guided by intertribal unity, COIN works to advance justice, defend sacred lands, and revitalize Indigenous lifeways through leadership, advocacy, and education. COIN upholds the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as the foundation of its mission.
The Founder's seal (Yamassee Nation · Commonwealth of Indigenous Nations) and the Yamassee — New England Tribes flag. COIN is the Boston-rooted entity; the Kingdom of PeaceKeepers is rooted in Omdurman, Nubia, Sudan, and raised in the Americas.
Governance
Supreme body — the Grand Council of Indigenous Nations. Ten departments: Sovereignty & Governance; Land, Territories & Environment; Language, Culture & Spiritual Lifeways; Justice & Restorative Traditions; Education & Intergenerational Knowledge; Health, Healing & Traditional Medicines; Economic Sovereignty & Resource Equity; Diplomacy & Global Solidarity; Women, Youth & Two-Spirit Futures; Truth, Memory & Reconciliation. Advisory councils: Elders, Youth Assembly, Storykeepers, Nations' Women. Modeled on the wampum belt — circles of responsibility, not hierarchy.
Black Indians — One People of Two Worlds
Long before there was a United States, Africans and the Indigenous nations of this land were already one story. Africans who escaped bondage found refuge among the Seminole and other nations; they married, raised families, fought side by side, and built free towns. Their descendants — called Black Indians, Black Sminoles, and Freedmen — carried both heritages in one bloodline. COIN stands in that same truth: the peoples of Africa and the First Peoples of the Americas are kin, joined on this soil for five hundred years.
Seminole Negro Indian Scouts, Texas, 1870s. Descendants of Africans who escaped slavery and found freedom among the Seminole Nation, they served as the U.S. Army's most decorated scouts — four earned the Medal of Honor.
John Horse (Juan Caballo), Black Seminole leader — he led his people from Florida to Mexico to keep them free.
The Muslims Who Were Brought in Chains — And Never Bowed
Among the Africans carried to America in chains were Muslims — scholars, farmers, princes, and healers — many literate in Arabic in an age when literacy itself was rare. Slavery tried to take their names, their language, and their faith. It failed. They prayed facing east. They fasted. They taught their children. They wrote — so that we would know who they were. Their story is one of the roots of the COIN mission.
Omar ibn Said (1770–1864) — The Scholar of North Carolina
Born in Futa Toro, in present-day Senegal, Omar ibn Said studied for twenty-five years before he was captured in 1807 and enslaved in South Carolina, then North Carolina. Found praying in a Fayetteville church, he covered his jail cell walls with Arabic writing. In 1831 he wrote his autobiography in Arabic — the only known autobiography written in Arabic by an enslaved person in America. It rests today in the Library of Congress. He kept his learning and his dignity for fifty-six years in bondage.
Omar ibn Said, ambrotype portrait, c. 1850.
A page of Omar ibn Said's autobiography, written in Arabic, 1831.
Illustration: Omar ibn Said writing Arabic on his cell wall, Fayetteville, 1811.
Ayuba Suleiman Diallo (1701–1773) — The Letter That Set Him Free
A Muslim scholar and merchant's son from Bundu, Ayuba Suleiman Diallo was enslaved in Maryland in 1731. The letter he wrote home in Arabic crossed the Atlantic and reached men who bought his freedom. In London in 1733, William Hoare painted him in his own dress, a small Qur'an manuscript at his neck — a portrait of an enslaved man painted as a gentleman of learning, because that is what he was. He sailed home to Africa a free man.
Portrait of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo by William Hoare, London, 1733.
Bilali Muhammad (c. 1770–1857) — The Keeper of Sapelo Island
On Sapelo Island, Georgia, Bilali Muhammad led a community of some eighty enslaved Muslims. He kept the prayers, the feasts, and the Arabic names; his people were known for their discipline and their care of one another. He left a thirteen-page document in Arabic, drawn from Islamic teaching — one of the earliest Islamic texts written in America. The Gullah-Geechee families of Sapelo Island descend from his community to this day.
A page of Bilali Muhammad's Arabic document.
Hog Hammock, Sapelo Island — the Gullah-Geechee community descended from Bilali Muhammad's people, still on the island today.
Illustration: dawn prayer in Bilali Muhammad's community, Sapelo Island.
Yarrow Mamout (c. 1736–1823) — From Bondage to Georgetown Financier
Taken from Guinea as a boy, Yarrow Mamout spent forty-four years enslaved in Maryland before winning his freedom at about sixty years old. A devout Muslim who prayed aloud and kept his faith openly, he became a financier in Georgetown — a shareholder in the Bank of Columbia and a homeowner on Dent Place. Charles Willson Peale painted his portrait in 1819 and recorded his faith with respect. He died a free, wealthy, and honored man.
Portrait of Yarrow Mamout by Charles Willson Peale, 1819.
Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori (1762–1829), a prince of Futa Jallon enslaved forty years in Mississippi, freed in 1828 after his Arabic letter reached the Sultan of Morocco and the U.S. Secretary of State; and Estevanico of Azamor, Morocco, who crossed the Southwest with the Narváez expedition in 1528 — the first African known to walk the interior of this land.
Illustration: Estevanico of Azamor crossing the Southwest, 1530s.
From Their Story to the COIN Mission — Indigenous Healthcare for the Americas
These ancestors teach the mission. They survived because they cared for one another — healing, feeding, teaching, and praying together when the world gave them nothing. Bilali's people on Sapelo Island were a community that looked after its own. Omar's learning served everyone who came to him. That is the pattern COIN follows today.
The COIN Indigenous Healthcare Network for the Americas carries their example into the work of health: Indigenous-led care, rooted in culture, delivered by community health workers — the people of the community, trained to serve the community. In Boston, that work is done through CHW Workforce Development, Inc., which trains and fields community health workers across the neighborhoods of the city COIN calls home. The Department of Health, Healing & Traditional Medicines in COIN's charter holds this charge: health sovereignty, traditional medicine beside modern care, and equitable access to health for every Indigenous family.
They wrote in Arabic so they would not be forgotten. COIN builds so their names are carried — in health, in dignity, and in freedom.
Illustration: the COIN Indigenous Healthcare Network at work — community health workers serving families in Boston.
