Chief Yata

By Daniel Epstein

At Some time today, perhaps when a big sun is sinking behind the jungle-clad mountains, Chief Yata will sit cross-legged under a banyan tree on a Pacific island and tell his people about his journey to a sad and cheerless land far beyond the horizon. He will describe how the people there lie in the streets with no place to shelter and how those who do have houses hurry to work each morning, unsmiling, in the chase for money. It is a place, he says, where the culture is upside down, where animals in many cases receive more love than humans, and personal greed, rather than sharing, is the general rule.