Weaving the past into the present…

Thangola baita, Sorelea baita Thufa ma, Kemulua ma anoatha to inoto ki.
[Greetings. We honour our Creator, and the ancestors—past, present, and future—
who walk with us always.

Kastom Keepers began not as an organisation, but as a remembering.

A remembering of who we are and the sacred threads that binds us to where we come from.
It was born from a personal journey—one that led our founder, Millicent Ka’ameni Barty, to follow whispers of ancestral wisdom through storms, cities, and classrooms—until she arrived at a truth that was always there:

I remember the first time I learned how to weave.
I was five, just a child chasing laughter, asking for a ball to play with my cousins.

In her warm leafhut kitchen, Koko’o Geli—my grandmother—sat me down with three coconut fronds:
one young, two old.

With practiced hands, she wove them together, her wrinkly fingers telling stories I didn’t yet understand.
I watched closely as the young frond danced between the old— learning the rhythm of soft against strong, as the young found direction in the memory of the old.

When she finished, she handed me my first coconut-made ball, leaned close whispering in our Wala dialect:

“Millina, faosia ka rana o mal ne lia galona o laula mola gali”
“Millie, weaving will help you to understand the workings of the universe and there; you will find your place”

This is how we live— by weaving the new into the old, so nothing is forgotten and everything continues.

Grounded in the grassroots, we are a movement of memory.
Of healing. Of returning. Of reconnecting and restoring.

We do this to empower Indigenous communities, protect our sense of belonging, and nurture both present and future ancestors—so the next generation inherits not disconnection or silence, but deep knowledge and story. Not a legacy of drifting, but of deep belonging.

We are Kastom Keepers

And this is our story.

Halo Olgeta!

I am Millicent— proud daughter of the Lisiala, Maruu, and Ghafe-Kaura Tribes of Makira and Malaita Provinces, Solomon Islands. Tagio tumas for coming to sit with me on my mat.

Kastom Keepers has been a life-long woven tapestry of my own journey to understand the workings of the universe, and finding my place—purpose— in it.

My story begins with my very first teachers, my grandmothers, and elders. They have long since passed onto the other world now. To be honest, as a child, I remembered very little of my kastom education as it was happening, but my Koko’o always assured me that, I would remember when I needed to know. She was not wrong.

Growing up between the Solomon Islands and Indonesia, I learned early that kastom isn’t something you hold—it’s something that holds you.

Whether sitting cross-legged in my island kitchens, facing treacherous seas to document climate impacts, or standing before world leaders like Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and President Obama, I’ve always carried fragments of ancestral teaching:

To only take from the ocean what you can return.
To weave with intention, purpose and care.
To protect what is sacred—both seen and unseen.
To ask for guidance from nature with gratitude.
To honour the deep roots of the land and sea in order to truly love and respect people.
And to always listen—to the salt, soil, and spirit.

In 2015, I founded Millicent Designs — our work uses traditional storytelling methods and visual tools to turn land laws, political promises, and civic knowledge into something rural communities could see, feel, and act on. With only 17% adult literacy in the Solomons, oral and visual language became a bridge for understanding, dignity, and decision-making.

But as tides of globalisation and climate change rise, I no longer wanted to be a passive witness to how fast kastom knowledge—oral, place-based, spiritual—was disappearing along with the land itself. Like in my maternal village of Lilisiana, where we’ve already lost over 23 metres (over 5 decades) to the sea—I could feel our birana eroding with it. On my other hand, my paternal island, Owa Raha ‘expands’ after every cyclone and tectonic shift. One coastline recedes, another rises. One is crisis, the other creation.

Learning science in the classroom gave me the words to explain the how .
But learning science through bibiringa or birana—our kastom way of life—taught me the why, the laws of balance and how I belong to it and can protect it.

In 2022, as an Obama Scholar at Columbia University studying MA Oral History and Decolonising Traditional Systems, I began threading together decades of design work, advocacy, ancestral knowledge, and systems thinking into weaving a clear vision:

To safeguard Indigenous knowledge as a blueprint for resilience, self-determination, and cultural survival.
That vision became Kastom Keepers.

Because the greatest questions in life— “Who am I?, Why am I here? Where am I going?” can’t be answered without knowing “Where do I come from?”.
To be rooted is how we rise.
In our rising, that’s resilience.

““Kastom Keepers stands at the edge of a cultural renaissance, where ancestral wisdom rises not as memory, but as a guide to reimagine a resilient and sustainable future.””

— Millicent Barty