In 2012 at Gora Art Centre, Fate Savari presented a schoolbook she had obtained from her granddaughter. It was filled from front to back with drawings about her ancestral Ömie stories (including the creation story), histories, culture and clan designs. There were also some loose pages in the front and back of the schoolbook and more drawings on paper wrapped up in a larger drawing on paper. Fate created the book and drawings because she felt a great urgency to record her profound knowledge before she passed away. She used whatever materials she could find on hand. After presenting this first book, Fate requested “another book and drawing materials” so she could still create art during the seasons that she didn’t have any barkcloth to paint. So in 2014, Fate filled yet another drawing book with her art and this drawing is from that second collection of drawings.

Fate has drawn all of the mountain peaks of Mount Lamington which is actually composed of several mountains. She knows this land well having grown up in old Sodinejo village near Huvaimo and Mount Obo. She says that it was the peak of Mount A’oji that erupted in 1951.

The border is orriseegé or ‘pathways’ through the gardens and provide a compositional framework for the designs.

The small black infilled triangles are moköjö bineb’e, the red chest feathers of the parrot. The moköjö bird appears in several Dahorurajé and Sahuoté clan stories. The birds often appear as a flock in the form of a cloud, stealing children or collecting deceased children and carrying them/delivering them to the Ancestor spirit villages high on the volcano Huvaimo and other mountaintops where deceased Ancestors reside. In the old stories, the parrots also commonly communicate and bring messages of warning to Ömie people.

The lines that run diagonally are ije bi’weje, boys cutting the leaves of a tree. Fate explains: “The mother was cleaning the bush to make a garden with her two young sons. The boys climbed a tree to cut all of the branches and leaves down. The branches fell down and the mother took all of the leaves and threw them away. Then the mother got plenty of bananas, taro and yam to plant in their newly cleared garden. When they finished planting all of the plants, they ate all of the food from the garden and lived a long life.”