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Our lifeways are ecologically unsustainable and socially stressful.

Their lifeways were ecologically sustainable, socially satisfying, materially sufficient, and culturally rich.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquian_peoples

The basic social unit was the village: a few hundred people related by a clan kinship structure.

A human-scaled group of familiar others … which constitutes social sanity.

In the spring, when the fish were spawning, they left the winter camps to build villages at coastal locations and waterfalls. In March, they caught smelt in nets and weirs, moving about in birch bark canoes. In April, they netted alewife, sturgeon and salmon. In May, they caught cod with hook and line in the ocean; and trout, smelt, striped bass and flounder in the estuaries and streams. Putting out to sea, they hunted whales, porpoises, walruses and seals. They gathered scallops, mussels, clams and crabs.

From April through October they hunted migratory birds and their eggs: Canada geese, brant, mourning doves and others. In July and August they gathered strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and nuts. In September, they split into small groups and moved up the streams to the forest. There, they hunted beaver, caribou, moose and white-tailed deer.

We’ll live like that again someday. Our current lifeways are much too ecologically and socially stressful.