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 Ömie 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. This is one of the special drawings from that first presentation of drawings.

The central design is hartu’e, the design of the ceremonial shell necklace. Hartu’e have mouthpieces behind the shell which dancers bite to display in their mouths during ceremonial dance performances. Ömie people obtained the shells from coastal tribes of Oro Province by means of trade and they also collected them from the beach. Most hartu’e and other shell necklaces that can still be found in the Ömie mountains were originally traded by the owners parents or grandparents a long time ago. Sometimes the “shell” can be fashioned from a cassowary breastbone to replicate the shell. Shell jewellery was made from sea shells and turtle shells in the times of the ancestors. The shells were a foreign, rare and beautiful material from the faraway coast, so, were highly valued in the Ömie mountains and would be displayed as a form of wealth on necklaces. The hartu’e and worro worrë (matabuté) were so highly valued they became important barkcloth designs and were painted onto nioge. Fate’s father Lokirro told her about his travels to find turtle shells on the coast. He told her how the people living on the coast would hunt and kill the turtles but would leave the turtle shells on the beach. The Ömie would search for them and carry the turtle shell in one whole piece back up to the Ömie mountains.

Other designs that can be seen in this drawing are:

~ The curved lines are nenyai, a white seashell forehead adornment worn by women. Fate says these were made “in the times of the Ancestors” and are still worn today.

~ 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.”

~ The short bristle-like design is ijo bunë, representing the roots of trees after they have been chopped down in order to clear the garden for planting food. Another short bristle-like design that can be seen is dubi dubi’e, representing the leaf of a rainforest vine that often grows on mountaintops.

~ The criss-cross design is mi’ija’ahe, animal (wallaby) bones found while digging in the garden.

~ 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.