The Aleut were a population that lived on some islands in the North Pacific with very little vegetation and no trees while the Tlingit lived on islands with lots of forests. For this reason, the former built their boats pasting together wood fragments found on beaches, whereas the latter cut down whole trees and dug them out until what remained was a canoe. The result was in both cases a boat with which they could go fishing, but its construction could not have been more different. In one case wood was collected and in the other thrown away. Today with a tsunami of info on almost any subject we are rapidly changing from the Aleut we were into Tlingit. The problem becomes eliminating what is unnecessary to keep what we need. Kids must learn to eliminate unnecessary info, but the task is not so simple as they often have teachers who studied as Aleut. Leaving out the ‘excess’ is the required technique today be it food, alcohol, consumer goods, sex and ‘much more’.