TITLE: Designs of the Ancestors (chest feathers of the red parrot, boys chopping tree branches, spots of the wood-boring grub, old animal bones found while digging in the garden, small white plants that grow on mountaintops, and spotted markings of the Ancestor’s footprint stone at Uborida).

This is one of the final paintings Fate created before she passed away. She has painted a highly significant barkcloth known as Amami nioge, the cloth of the Ancestors. She explains, “This s how the first ancestors painted in the beginning... my mother showed me everything.” The large zig-zags seen in the work are one of the earliest known barkcloth painting designs Fate calls “the design of our Ancestors”. Interestingly, this design strongly resembles dahoru’e, the design of the Ömie mountains, and is most likely to be the earliest iteration of such mountain designs. The spaces between the zig-zags are infilled with a cross hatching and band design called mwe, representing food gardens. Other paintings by Fate of mwe, mweje and or’e (gardens or paths through the garden) have revealed that the lines commonly seen running throughout Ömie women’s paintings known as orriseegé or ‘pathways’, actually originate from the ancient mwe/mweje/or’e garden designs.

Unfortunately Fate passed away before the precise meaning of the large chevron design could be confirmed. It is identical to the ancient Sahuoté clan designs (as painted by Avarro, Celestine Warina (Kaaru) and Lillian Garobi. Celestine calls her chevron design, ije taigue (design of the crooked tree) and Lillian calls her chevron design, obohutaigue (Ancestral Ujawé initiation tattoo design of the chin - tree bark pattern).

The border and the straight lines that run through the work are known as orriseegé (paths/pathways) and provide a compositional framework for the designs.

The smaller, fine zig-zag design that can be seen inside the orriseegé and main designs are known as 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 the deceased and carrying them/delivering them to the Ancestor Spirit village high on the volcano Huvaimo. In the old stories, the parrots also commonly communicate and bring messages of warning to Ömie people. The lines that run diagonally through the orriseegé and main designs are ije bi’weje – boys cutting the branches and leaves of a tree. Fate tells the story for this design: “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 spotted design is called sabu deje, representing the spots which can be seen on the sides of a wood-boring grub. This grub is sacred to Ömie people as it plays an important part within the creation story of how Huvaimo (Mount Lamington) came to be volcanic. It is a traditional soru’e (tattoo design) which was most commonly tattooed running in one line under both eyes. Today it is applied to Ömie people’s faces for dance performances with natural pigments. The small groups of crosses that run through the orriseegé are mi’ija’ahe, animal bones found while digging in the garden. The bristle design of fine, short lines inside the orriseegé are dubidubi’e, the leaves of small white plants called dubi’e that grow on mountaintops. The spots within the squares are jä’ino carticarti, representing the spotted markings that can be seen on a stone on the Uborida River south of the village of Gora. This is a significant site by at the swimming hole known as Maruro, and by the waterfall known as Juoho, where a footprint was left by a Nyonirajé clan man ancestor, as he ran and escaped from a cannibal spirit belonging to the Misajé clan. Fate explains the markings look as if a grub has dug holes in the stone and left the marks.