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 a traditional nioge (barkcloth skirt) design of the Dahorurajé clan. The main arching motif is of worro worrë, the matabuté (turtle) shell pendant which were made in the times of the ancestors. Turtle shell was a foreign, rare and beautiful material from the faraway coast so it was highly valued in the Ömie mountains and would be displayed as a form of wealth on necklaces. So highly valued, the worro worrë also became an important barkcloth design and was painted onto nioge, just as Fate has painted here. 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. It is important to note that while the main arching motif is worro worrë, the turtle shell pendant, there is a smaller design representing the same thing painted similarly within the larger one. There are also similar slanted arching motifs which are not the jewelry but simply the turtle shell fragments as they are before being crafted into jewelry. These turtle shell fragments are referred to as ‘worro worrë in’e in’e’.

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

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.”