When I first heard the words social ecology together, I was in South Dakota with six other students, touring the Sioux Indian reservations. Social ecology was a new concept for me, one of many I learned about last semester while living on the Lakota Sioux Nation's Rosebud Reservation.

Do the words "social" and "ecology" sound strange together? I thought so. Social events deal with people. Ecology, on the other hand, is a science concerned with preservation of our ecosystem's equilibrium.

But the reality is that these two things are intertwined. Our society is part of the ecosystem; as members of society, we need to realize how to live in balance with it.

Social ecology implies that we need to cultivate an equilibrium in our society, too. In the debate about what is and isn't politically correct, we often make an escape from our social responsibilities. Our actions and attitudes toward each other are important to our environmental responsibilities, not distinct from them. Real ecology concerns the elimination of the false separation between people and the earth, and between the different peoples of the earth.

The biological and cultural diversities of the earth are utterly intertwined.

A perfect example of this interconnectedness lies within the United States. The Great Plains --once the domain of many nations of indigenous people now on reservations, including the Lakota Sioux -- now provide sustenance for a large part of the world. The Plains have been nicknamed "the breadbasket of the world" for their enormous food production capability.

But the rich soil the pioneers found when they came to the Plains is gone; the land has been overfarmed and overgrazed to the point where it is desperately in need of ecological renewal.

One of our most vital resources is in danger of becoming a wasteland.

Looking at the problem, some think tanks at Rutgers University decided that the best and most permanent way to solve the problem was to create a "buffalo commons." To apply this idea, the farmers and ranchers would have to recreate the plains' former ecological state by working with the government to replant prairie grass and repopulate areas with buffalo.

This idea makes sense. Once all the elements of the cycle are back in place, the land has a great chance of restoring itself to equilibrium and nutrients to its soil. It could prevent the earth from shriveling up and blowing away, which is the direction it's headed in now.

This is funny, yet sad. It tells me that if white settlers had come to this country and learned from the indigenous people, whose roots connect them to the land there for 40,000 years, we would not be facing this disaster. The Great Plains are sitting on the brink because Anglo culture was too arrogant to learn how to live lightly and well on the land from the people who knew the land best.

On the reservation, I learned that the buffalo and the land were sacred in traditional Lakota culture. The Lakota know "property" is a foolish idea because people belong to the land, not the other way around. They know the inner workings of nature and revere them.

Now, after allowing our societies' institutions to abuse the Lakota and their culture for many generations, we have lost an enormous body of knowledge the indigenous people could teach us about the Plains and how to live there without disrupting the ecosystem.

The situation on the Great Plains demonstrates why we need to make our social awareness as automatic and important as our responsibility to drop a can or newspaper into a recycling bin.

But creating social responsibility is not that easy, I'm aware. Comparing social responsibility to dropping a can into a recycling bin may seem to be a ridiculous comparison.

Remember, though, that recycling a can without a system in place would be nearly impossible. People are working at many levels to keep the system for recycling materials running.

Now we need to work for a societal system that respects differences and cultural diversity.

Taking the extra time to listen and learn about people different from yourself isn't difficult, but it does take a conscious effort.

It sounds so simple, but if we can succeed in doing this -- it will take time to do, step by step -- we will build this new system.

As if kindness and decency aren't good enough reasons to respect others, we now have a common goal. We must create a liveable environment, and humanity is part of the ecosystem's balance.

This is no secret to the Lakota.

They say, Mitakuye oyasin. "Everything is related."

From our individual small steps of responsibility will evolve a tremendous stride for society --toward collective enlightenment and survival.

I am indebted to Alan Thein Durning and professors Frank and Deborah Epstein Popper of Rutgers University for ideas presented in the column.