Millicent Barty has spent years trying to decolonize her country, recording oral histories across the Solomon Islands and promoting Melanesian culture. Her goal: to prioritize local knowledge, not just what arrived with the British Empire.
But Friday morning, when asked about the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Barty sighed and frowned. Her eyes seemed to hold a cold spring of complicated emotion as she recalled meeting the queen in 2018 with a Commonwealth young leaders’ program.
"I love Her Majesty,” she said, sipping coffee on the Solomon island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific, 9,300 miles from Buckingham Palace. "It’s really sad.”