UK leader Burnham hints at apology for country's role in slave trade but rejects reparations

LONDON (AP) — U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham says his government will consider apologizing for the first time for its role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but has rejected calls for the country to pay reparations.

Writing in the Guardian on Saturday, Burnham said Britain needed to acknowledge its “complicated history” in order to protect the Commonwealth, an association of 56 independent nations that grew out of the British Empire.

Burnham travels to Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean next week for a meeting of Commonwealth leaders, which he hopes will bolster the U.K.'s relations with nations in Africa and the Caribbean, many of which were former colonies.

“For years, those members of the Commonwealth affected by the slave trade have asked for an honest conversation about the legacies of slavery,” Burnham said. “By sticking our heads in the sand, we have damaged the ability of the Commonwealth to function.”

Burnham said his government is offering to begin a “structured dialogue” with those affected by slavery and will listen to calls for a formal apology by the British state, which benefited hugely from the slave trade before it was outlawed in 1833 — the British Empire was arguably founded on it.

“I do not think that British people today can be held liable for historical wrongs, however heinous, that happened in a different age under different laws and in which they played no personal part,” Burnham said.

Instead, the prime minister said, he wants to address the issues that face the Commonwealth and other nations today, including high levels of debt faced by many developing countries.

Burnham said he would work with other wealthy nations and investors to help vulnerable countries pay off their debts over a longer period and at lower interest rates.

To help move this initiative forward, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a champion of debt relief for developing nations, will attend the Commonwealth meeting, he said.

King Charles III faced calls for Britain to apologize and pay reparations during the first phase of a nine-day trip to the Caribbean that will end with the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting Sunday through Wednesday in St. John’s, the capital of Antigua and Barbuda.

Speaking in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, on Tuesday, Charles acknowledged “the great suffering and injustices of the past” but stopped short of an apology.

The king, whose forebears directly benefited from the slave trade, has been prevented from going further because it was government policy not to apologize for the country’s role in the slave trade and Britain’s constitutional monarch speaks on behalf of the elected government.

Burnham’s comments come as Britain seeks to shore up relations with its traditional allies in the Commonwealth in the face of economic, environmental and military challenges around the world.

A change in the government’s position could also respond to younger, more liberal voters at home, where activists have called for Britain to reexamine the legacy of its colonial history. It involved the transfer of several million people from Africa to work, often in the most arduous conditions, on plantations in the Caribbean, North America and elsewhere.

In 2020, anti-racism protesters in Bristol tore down the statue of Edward Colston, an English merchant and politician, saying the city should no longer glorify the life of a slave trader. Colston was a deputy governor of the Royal African Company, which shipped thousands of enslaved people to English colonies in the Americas.

The descendants of some British people who profited from the slave trade have already apologized and offered compensation. They include the owner of the Guardian, a liberal newspaper where leaders of Burnham’s Labour Party often lay out policy initiatives.

U.K. politicians have traditionally focused on the country’s role in banning the slave trade in 1807 and outlawing slavery throughout the British Empire in 1833.

But Burnham said it is now time for the country to acknowledge the other side of the story as well.

“We are a country where brave people led the way in abolishing slavery, but we are also a country that participated in the trade in human lives,” he said.

“The trans-Atlantic slave trade was a brutal and barbaric violation of those people," Burnham said. "I want to express my sorrow and regret for the pain and suffering of so many millions of people, and to recognize the way it still shapes our world today.”

Barbados' prime minister, Mia Mottley, welcomed Burnham's acknowledgment of the “brutality of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, his openness to a formal apology and his offer of structured dialogue” but said there were differences on the issue of reparations.

“Those differences should not prevent progress on health, education, tackling poverty and inequality, and fairer debt terms for vulnerable states,” she said on X.

Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of nearby Antigua and Barbuda, echoed Mottley's response, calling Burnham's comments a “significant and welcome development.”

“The Caribbean’s longstanding position on reparatory justice remains unchanged,” he wrote on Facebook. “Differences over financial compensation should be addressed through dialogue, but they need not prevent progress in areas where agreement is possible.”

Associated Press writer Pan Pylas in London contributed to this report.

Britain's King Charles III deplanes at Lynden Pindling Airport in Nassau, Bahamas, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Tim Aylen)

Britain's King Charles III, left, and Guyana's Prime Minister Mark Anthony Phillip, center, attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the Commonwealth War Graves in Georgetown, Guyana, Friday, Oct. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Delano Williams)

Britain's King Charles III shakes traditional cowbells as he parades with Junkanoo dancers flanked by Minister of Agriculture and Marine Resources Jomo Campbell, left, and Minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage Leslia Brice, right, during a cultural festival in Rawson Square, Nassau, Bahamas, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Tim Aylen)

Britain's King Charles III inspects the guard of honor at the Royal Bahamas Defence Force Base in Nassau, Bahamas, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Tim Aylen)

Britain's Prime Minister Andy Burnham leaves 10 Downing Street to attend the weekly Prime Ministers' Questions session in parliament in London, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026.(AP Photo/Thomas Krych)

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Fawn Douglas puts an urban spin on traditional basketmaking.

Instead of using desert plants, she tightly weaves heavy conduit wire to form the base of a basket she plans to display at the new Wai Gallery in Las Vegas. There, she and her partner, A.B. Wilkinson, showcase pieces from Indigenous artists and host free art programs, from collage projects to sidewalk chalk paintings.

Douglas, a Las Vegas Paiute Tribe citizen, says she sees how art can heal and bring people together.

“They’re off their phones. They’re having actual conversations together,” Douglas said.

The gallery and IndigenousAF storefront dismantle stereotypes, including that Native Americans and Alaska Natives are a monolith and all live on reservations, she said. It opened just ahead of National Native American Heritage Month, which celebrates the diverse histories and cultures of hundreds of tribal communities across the U.S. in November.

Native American art isn’t just geometric, Douglas said, and each piece has a narrative.

A painting behind her featured a silhouetted Joshua tree and a backlit mountain range with a brilliant night sky. It’s a desert twist on Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” — and it acted as a call to action for turning Gold Butte into a national monument in Nevada.

A black-and-white underwater photograph depicts a Hawaiian dancer, seemingly floating in space. It is called “Ha’ina ’ia mai,” which translates to “let the story be told.”

Here is a collection of short stories highlighting joy in Native American and Alaska Native communities:

When the salmonberries are ripe in Kipnuk, Alaska, the Paul family isn’t far behind.

They are one of several families who returned to practice subsistence gathering a year after Typhoon Halong struck their village, damaging 90% of its buildings, floating some houses miles away and leaving nearly all of the community’s residents displaced.

It’s been an especially good year for salmonberries because of heavy snow last winter, locals say.

From a boat, Burt Paul scanned the tundra for the orange berries — or naunraqs as they’re called in coastal Yup’ik — like orange carpet on a sea of green grass. They giggled as the dogs ferociously defended them against two musk oxen grazing on shore.

The Pauls typically camp out for several days and pick berries. But this summer was broken up into shorter trips when Burt Paul’s scattered family could return together.

The family never misses a year of berry picking, they said.

“Coming home, seeing everyone, the community — it’s heartwarming,” Caley Paul said.

When the day ended, the family had a five-gallon bucket filled to the brim. Not as much as most years but enough for Burt Paul to make his famous naunraq pie. Enough for everyone to have a taste.

— Samantha Watson, KYUK

Foster care didn’t separate Rosa Soto Alvarez from her Pascua Yaqui community.

She and her siblings were placed with another family on the tribe’s reservation in Arizona, where their foster mother served up tortillas and fry bread with pots of chile con carne. They grew up surrounded by saguaros and the sounds of relatives speaking the Yaqui language. They took road trips to powwows.

Under the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, tribal children taken into foster care have the right to remain with Indigenous families.

That experience has guided Alvarez’s life work. At 50, she is a mother and grandmother who has cared for 25 foster children in her home. She leads the tribe’s ICWA Committee, coordinating statewide advocacy that supports the federal child welfare law and encourages states to adopt versions of it.

Nationwide, Native children are disproportionately represented in state foster care systems.

“I’m just a rez girl trying to make a difference,” she said. “There’s so many children out there who don’t have a voice, and I know I have to be that voice.”

— Nancy Marie Spears, The Imprint

A group of Indigenous girls carried a vessel of river water to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Tribal Council and walked out with rights for the river.

The council unanimously passed a resolution this year recognizing the rights of the water system that rises in the Great Smoky Mountains and flows into the Gulf of Mexico. To the Cherokee, these waterways are known as Longperson and are a living relative.

The NAIWA Daughters, girls ages 10 to 17, brought the resolution forward after receiving training on the rights of nature, hosting community dinners, conducting surveys and meeting with council members. The Earth Law Center says it’s the first all-female-led rights-of-nature effort in the U.S.

The resolution grants the waterway five rights, including the right to flow freely and to be free from pollution.

The council later passed another resolution to raise money to remove the decommissioned Ela Dam in North Carolina, which has blocked the sicklefin redhorse, a freshwater fish, for more than a century.

“We hold the responsibility of stewarding the headwaters, so every living being downstream has water for life,” said NAIWA Daughters co-founder and Chairwoman Jasmine Smith.

— Liz Kimbrough, Mongabay

Sugarbush is a springtime tradition in many Native communities.

Students in the Minneapolis-based Wicoie Nandagikendan early childhood program trekked through the snow this past winter to learn about tapping maple trees and processing the syrup at Porky’s Sugarbush Camp.

The children and their parents walked past colorful buckets hanging on trees to catch the sap. They helped stir syrup already boiling in a large black kettle and helped make sugar and cakes. One student placed tobacco at a maple tree during a ceremony.

For parents like Christian Swor, the program provided his son and family an opportunity to connect with Indigenous culture and language. The early childhood program immerses children in the Ojibwe and Dakota languages.

Other cultural activities in the curriculum include how to cook dishes with rabbit or duck and how to process wild rice.

“We do hit all the state standards, but it’s like hitting all those early childhood indicators, progress and more,” said Ojibwe classroom teacher Liz Zoongwegiizhigook Zinsli.

— Chandra Colvin, Report for America corps member, MPR News

At 67, Kerry Butler still fits into his old Tulsa Indian Youth Center boxing jacket.

He joined the team for three years in the 1970s when he was 15. The center served a vital role for Native Americans after the federal government pushed them off their ancestral homelands and into major cities to assimilate them into white society.

Many Native youth had low self-esteem in those days, but a common gathering space and boxing helped change that, Butler said.

“When you got in front of a crowd of people, and they were cheering for you, and when you got into the ring, and people were clapping, ‘Awesome! Let’s go, Kerry! You can do it!’"

"It just rose up confidence inside that you never felt before,” Butler, who is Muscogee and Cherokee, added.

The youth center no longer exists. But a nonprofit called Tulsa Indian Community Center, Inc., recently formed with a vision to provide another gathering space for youth.

More than 60 tribes are represented in the Tulsa Public Schools district.

— Brittany Harlow, Crosswinds News

Hodokii Johnson leans in closely, as they tattoo three brown lines on each of Kristin Gentry’s fingers.

One is for the strength of Gentry’s mother. One is for Gentry. And one is for Gentry’s daughter.

When all the lines are darkened, the two say a prayer.

Johnson, a 24-year-old Muscogee Nation citizen and descendant of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, have been interested in body art since they were a teenager to cope with mental health struggles and now sees it with greater purpose.

They’ve worked with Inchunwa, a project dedicated to healing through traditional tattoos from the southeastern U.S., and recently attended a convention highlighting Indigenous tattoo practitioners in Oklahoma City.

Giving tattoos and ancestral markings is sacred work, they say, because of the permanence and deeper meaning.

“So much of the tattoo tradition that we had has since been weeded out through the efforts of colonization,” Johnson said. “Tattoos are seen as a taboo, unholy thing. When we talk about ancestral markings, it’s rather the opposite.”

— Sarah Liese, KOSU

Fawn Douglas puts a cup on a shelf at IndigenousAF, her store and gallery in Las Vegas, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)

Students use wooden paddles to process maple syrup at a skigamizigan (sugarbush) camp in Maple Plain, Minn., Wednesday, March 18, 2026. (Kerem Yücel/Minnesota Public Radio via AP)