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.

Fate has painted the first part of an ancestral story belonging to the Nyonirajé [1] clan. She says this story originates from Gora village and that the associated events occurred at Uborida (Jordan River), in the land to the south of Gora in Ömie territory.

Fate explains the story:

The Nyonirajé man put a Cockatoo feather-spring in his hair and left the village just before daybreak to hunt for fish in the river, Uborida. There was a Misajé clan-man who was a Spirit who saw him coming down the path [2]. At the swimming hole called Maruro, the Spirit Man jumped down the waterfall called Juoho and hid behind it, waiting to attack and eat the Nyonirajé man. The Nyonirajé man saw the Spirit Man was going to attack him so he ran from him to a village called Da’o. The Nyonirajé clan man left a footprint in the stone at Uborida.

In this drawing Fate has depicted the footprint-stone and other stones at the Uborida site as streams of diamonds. The cross-hatching and spots on the stones represent the spotted markings that can be seen on the footprint stone, as if a grub has dug holes and left marks. She refers to these spotted stones as jä’ino carticarti.

Note [1]: Also known simply as the Nyoni clan.
Note [2]: The Misajé clan Spirit Man and the Nyonirajé clan-man were distant relatives, Fate refers to this familial relationship as “cousin-brothers”.

Other designs that can be identified in this drawing:

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