Episode 2 - Seeing Beyond The Surface

A stranger on a moving train tried to define me in a single glance—and got it wrong. That awkward moment became a catalyst to rethink how we tie appearance and language to identity, and why our minds reach for labels before we reach for questions. We walk through the story beat by beat, then turn it into a practical guide for using critical thinking in everyday encounters.

I share how rides across Los Angeles often come with a guessing game—Latino, Asian, anything but Native American—and what happens when the reveal meets silence. From there, we unpack how expectations shape our judgments, how language both signals and distorts identity, and why tribal affiliation, recognition, clan systems, and ceremony make Native identity far more layered than most people realize. Instead of lecturing, we explore small, tangible habits: ask “Where are you from originally?”, use translation tools when needed, and let people name themselves on their own terms.

Along the way, we reframe critical thinking as a calm, curious pause. It is not about proving someone wrong; it is about collecting context before deciding what’s true. You’ll hear practical prompts to trade snap labels for better questions, reflections to examine your own blind spots, and stories from everyday conversations that open windows into places you may never travel. By the end, you’ll have a playbook for listening before labeling—and a reminder that identity is complex because people are complex, not because they are trying to be difficult.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves real conversations, and leave a review with one question you plan to ask more often. Your stories help shape what we explore next.

Mundo Mondays

Transcript

A Metro Encounter Sparks Reflection

SPEAKER_01 0:12

So in today's episode, years ago, I was riding the metro in Los Angeles when a stranger walked to me and started speaking Spanish. I didn't know her. I didn't understand her at first. And she tried again and I still didn't understand. And then she got frustrated and said something that struck me. She said some people's kids should know at least their culture. In that moment, she assumed she knew who I was, where I came from, and what culture I belonged to. I told her I wasn't Hispanic or Latino, and that I was Native American, and that I do know my culture and some of my language. She went silent, looked embarrassed, and at the next stop she quietly got off the train. And I was speechless. At first I was frustrated by the assumption, but then I started to think, how often do I make assumptions about others too? How often do we connect appearance, language, and culture without knowing someone's story? So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about culture, assumptions, and how critical thinking begins when we question not others' beliefs, but our own. Years ago, probably around 2000 and maybe I want to say 2009, 2010, roughly around that time frame, I was visiting my cousin who lived in the L in the Los Angeles area. And I would take the metro and to explore a lot of parts of LA because I was very interested in knowing the city. I thought it was pretty interesting, and at the time I didn't have a car, so I thought this would be a great way to explore the city. So one of my excursions, I actually was standing and minding my own business, and I had my headphones in. So I was listening to music on my phone, and I noticed that this elderly Latina woman just got up and started walking towards me while the train was going or the metro was going. And so she gets right into me and I took out my headphones because I can surely see that she's trying to talk to me. And then she says to me something in Spanish. And then it just makes me feel like what do you say to this? What do you how do you react? So in that instant, I look at the the lady and I tell her, excuse me, ma'am, I'm not Spanish, not Latino, I'm Native American, and I do know some of my language, and I do know part of my culture. And she looked at me and she didn't say nothing. She had the dare in the hell I look, and sh just the shocked in her eyes said everything. She backed away from me, and right next to me on my right hand side was the exit. So she immediately walked towards that. And at the next immediate stop, the doors opened up and she exited. And I'm left there thinking to myself, what did I do to this lady? Why did she say this to me? Why did she come up to me in the first place? And I really don't know what to say. I really don't know what to do in this moment because this has never happened to me. Yes, as Native American, as a Native American, I do have certain racial experiences towards me. And yes, given my facial features, for since you guys are all listening to me, I do look, I guess you could say that I do have Hispanic or Latino features, but my eyes also are kind of slanted a little towards my ears. So people can make that assumption. Now living in the Los Angeles area, I do get mistaken for Latino and Asian quite frequently in my Uber rides. And my Uber drivers always play this game of guess who I am. And it's really interesting just to hear their assumptions, and I entertain the ideas of what they think I am. A lot of the times the top two Asian I guess picks are uh Korean and Filipino, and I've gotten a few Chinese, but on the Latino side, they say, Are you Latino or Mexican? And I of course tell them I'm Native American, and as soon as I tell them I'm Native American, they f have absolutely nothing to say, they're like shocked because they have never encountered my type of people before. Again, you know, 1% of the population in the United States are Native Americans or American Indians. So getting back to what I'm trying to say, cultural assumption moment. So this lady's comment, thus let elderly Latinas comment. Some people's kids should know their culture. Now, this did hit me a little emotional because how do you respond to this? Because, first of all, I'm Native American, like I said, and I'm thinking, okay. And I do know my culture to some degree, and I know some of my language a little bit. Not a lot, but a little bit. And I guess her reactions of embarrassment, the dare in the headlight look, and quietly walk away was kind of like her own embarrassment of the situation. And getting off at the immediate at the next stop still kind of boggles my mind. She didn't say I'm sorry, she didn't apologize, and that was it. And I was there left speechless. So that kind of brings me up to this next point. Reflection. How do I feel in this moment? Do I feel angry? Do I feel sad? Do I feel upset? Am I frustrated? Am I surprised? I feel all these things because you know, I'm left there by myself with my own thoughts. And you know, I'm just minding my own business and this happens to me. And I I just keep replaying the same thing in my head over and over. Like, did this just really happen? And then I try to put myself in her in her shoes and try to think about this. Yes, I do look Hispanic, yes, I do look Asian. But the thing is, to make that assumption, how would I go about it? And I think for me, I guess I would kind of have to ask myself some questions. Is this something I really want to ask? Because most of the time, people are people, people belong to different ethnicities, and most of the time I usually say hi, hello, how are you? in that, you know, opening conversations. I don't immediately make the judgments of some of these things. And if people I know are from other places, I can see by their physical features, and like for instance, my Uber drivers. The Uber drivers, I normally say, so where are you from originally? That's usually a good icebreaker. So again, in that moment, I didn't have the education, I didn't have the I guess the logic to see from that perspective. So let's get into critical thinking moment. So a lot of you know that part of this podcast is dealing with critical thinking. So I think it's a pretty good idea to discuss what exactly is critical thinking. So imagine you're at a restaurant and someone says, This is the best in town. One person loves it, another thought it was terrible. So you have these two people on opposite sides. So critical thinking isn't picking a side right away. It's asking in questions. Why did one person love it? And why did the other person hate it? What were their expectations? What did they order? So instead of saying this place is good or this place is bad, you look at the full picture before deciding for yourself. So that's the critical thinking I'm discussing about, and that's the critical thinking at this moment. And again, I do apologize, I'm dealing with a call. So this is the heart of the episode. Questions. Why do we assume someone's culture by their appearance? This is a good question. And you know, like I said, by some Uber drivers, I can see that they're obviously not from here, but also by how they speak English. Sometimes it's not very good English, or they have limited vocabulary, and I do understand that. So a lot of times for me now, when I hear something or see something like that, I ask the question, like I said earlier, where are you from originally? Some of the people tell me their home country or the ethnicity. So usually in that moment, I know if they're struggling in communicating with me, I take up my phone and I use Google Translator. I have a long history with Google Translator, and we'll discuss that in a future episode. But I have uh understood that Google Translator is pretty good at translating a lot of things, it's not a hundred percent accurate, but I do use it in communicating. So let's get back to the next question. Why do we connect language to identity automatically? Well, this is kind of an interesting thing because, as I said, you know, you want to make the idea of communicating with somebody, and sometimes English is not really for a first person's language, and so to express and articulate different ideas of someone they don't understand the language is very hard to communicate. So it's kind of important to understand identity, and language does tie into that, and as a Native American, people can come up to me and say, Well, what what tribe are you? And there's federally recognized and state recognized, as I stated before in another in the first episode, and being part of one of the federally recognized tribes, there's 500 plus recognized tribes. So that means we have our own culture, our own language, and our even our own, you know, form of government. We have our own history, we have our own separate thing, and 500 nations have all of that. So just to make the assumption, I can get that. So when I ask people these questions now, it kind of makes me think about it from that lens to understand that. So, how do how often do we do the things without thinking and realizing it? I think we do this every single time because I think the way that our minds are programmed and the way that we see things, we automatically default to these ideas. And like with critical thinking, you know, we ask these questions, and sometimes in previous experiences, our default response or default speaking in analyzing things go to that directly, and a lot of times we don't ask more questions because our minds are programmed in a certain way to simplify our task. So I think in many ways we need to retrain the way that we approach different situations. We can't assume people's culture, we can't assume their language, and you know, for me now I try very hard not to make assumptions, but I also am at fault at times, and I'm also human, so I do make mistakes, and I do apologize and I do say I'm sorry when I'm wrong. So, what does this mean? Well, as I mentioned before, there are times I have made assumptions about others, and you know, like I said, we're all human, and it's dangerous when we don't examine those questions because we carry on the ideas of society sometimes of how we see people, of how we label people, and that is sometimes the wrong thing. So, critical thinking is not about blaming, it's about taking a moment, pausing, and questioning things. So the culture, identity, and being seen. And a lot of you are saying, why am I saying these these bullet points? Because they're bullet points. So I'll try to keep on task and trying to move forward with these ideas. So how complex is identity? I think in this context, it's really really complex. And for me, it's okay, let's let's move on to the next point because this will give more context. So how often is my native identity getting erased or misunderstood? And how many cultures experience this? I think in this idea of complexity of how identity shapes our world, I have to put myself in this example. So for me, I carry different I guess identities. As I mentioned in episode one, when I'm on the res, I speak in a certain way, I talk in a certain way, I have certain jokes, I explain myself, I articulate myself differently, and then when I'm off the res, I explain myself in a different idea. But it's even more complex and even more kind of stressful and frustrating for me to express myself as a Native American, as American Indian. Because a lot of times people ask me questions, and being who I am, I am educated in these subjects. I do have my education very deeply rooted in this subject. So I know a lot of these ideas, I know the complexities. So I try to educate as much as I can without being a Rosetta Stone for all federally recognized tribes, and again, they're state-recognized tribes. So as you can see, that makes it even more complex. So another complexity is some tribal nations, let's put it in that way, some tribal nations do have a clan system, and in some nations, it's the clan is inherited by the father's side, and in some it's inherited by the mother's side. So I can see that even within a tribal nation, that is even more complex because your kinship is defined by your clan system, and a lot of those clan systems are part of the culture, part of the rituals, some of the ceremonies in that regard, without going to too much detail. So for me, I know my culture and language to a certain degree, and I participate in our ceremonies, and I express these ideas in a way that I can relate to the world, and part of that shapes my identity, the way that I see the world in a different lens, but that doesn't define who I am as a person because I'm Native American, American Indian, I'm college educated, I've traveled, I've been out of the country, I've been able to see and witness different cultures, to have complex conversations with people from that live everywhere else or in some places, and even like discussing certain ideas with Uber drivers has given me a different perspective and how I shape myself every single day that I walk outside the doors. So, as you can see, the way that I see myself is is a complex situation because I'm not like everyone else, and I'm not trying to say that everyone else thinks like me, I'm just explaining it from my perspective, again, the Mundo perspective. So, you know, let's get let's tie it all back together. So, why does listening matter more than labeling? Well, it's better to understand and not assume because we understand people better when we start talking, when we start having uh dialogue that expresses these ideas, and we're able to kind of communicate better efficiently. So the real world takeaway for you listeners. I say reflection. I want to encourage my listeners right now to think about the last assumptions you made. And it could be from today, from last week, months ago, years ago. Think about something that happened to you. And did you make an assumption before asking questions? Did you use your critical thinking? And in that sense, were you like me shocked, or were you on the other side embarrassed? Again, this is not about who's right or who's wrong, but it's about listening before labeling. And I think that's kind of the the discussion at heart is just trying to understand people. Because sometimes you can learn a lot by being curious about other people's stories. As I mentioned before, in a lot of my Uber rides, I ask people who they are, where they come from, learning about their politics, their history, their you know, where they see themselves as being in the United States as an Uber driver. And some of these stories are really interesting. So a lot of times. I get the comment from my Uber drivers, wow, you're like one of the most interesting passengers. And I usually say why. And a lot of times they tell me usually the same response is we drive, and a lot of times people don't want to hear us. We just drive them from point A to point B and we drop them off and we never see them again. We usually ride in silence, taking our clients from point A to point B, and that's it. But with you, you actually want to know more about who I was. And it's made me question a lot of things of where I'm at now. What am I doing? This, why am I driving? What's my next goal? What's my next dream? And sometimes they reflect about them them themselves and where they're at. And usually when I hear that, I'm like, all I wanted to know was who you are. And I want to learn a little bit about that because sometimes, maybe in my own lifetime, I will never get to travel to some of these places where some of these people are from. And again, even though it's just one person, one story, I at least can say that I've shared that view through that way, through that perspective. So sometimes it's really beneficial to hear another person's stories. It's also cheap on entertainment. So anyway, moving on. So I guess the practical minds mindset is to replace assumption with curiosity and see it from that way. And I can see we're getting close to the end of the podcast. So I'll try not to be too long-winded. But as a lot of you would know, I become very long-winded, and usually my conversations with people who know me well, I usually say long story short, and I start talking for a nick for another 15 minutes, discussing every detail, but that's an inside joke. Anyway, so bringing it back to this topic, and this is why Mundo Perspectus exists, because to get a different perspective, to hear that idea of assumption. Because every day we learn something, every moment teaches us something different. You know, and if we don't know where they're from, but we're interested, you know, sometimes we can say, So that's interesting. So where are you from originally? Or have it framed in something like that. Sometimes people were shocky and say, Oh, I was born and raised here. And usually in that safe sense, you can just kind of weave in and out and make you know your own questions to go about that. Or you can say, Oh, I didn't know that. You know, tell me more about that place where you're from. So again, you learn something every single day. And understanding starts with small interactions, just like I said, you know, with me and my Uber drivers. And critical thinking makes us be better human beings because we question things, we question things every single day, we're learning something every day, and I think that's where critical thinking has not been in use a lot because we use technology, we use AI a lot, we use these different technology things to forget to critically think and analyze some of these things. So let's start practicing that a little bit more. Alright, people? So the idea understanding the world isn't about being right, it's about being willing to learn. Interesting, huh? So again, I want to thank my listeners for this time. I know a lot of you are still getting to know my me, my style, this podcast, the different topics. I sure hope you appreciate this topic today. I wanted to share something kind of more personal because I think for you guys to trust me to see through my lens, I have to be open with some of my experiences, some of my adventures. And I think with the podcasts, that's trying to give you the moon of perspective. So, and again, I do apologize for me being sick and kind of yeah, you know, you can hear my symptoms, but I do apologize for that. Well, hopefully in the next episode, we'll have something even more juicier to talk about. Critical thinking, or would it be travel tips? Hmm, I think I'm kind of leaning into something what we might discuss. So, alright, people. I'm glad you stopped by to listen to this, downloading it, or even just listening to it. Wherever you are, whenever you are, listen to it. I hope you have a good morning, a good afternoon, or a good night. Regardless of anything, I do wish you good positive thinking and sending me good energy as well. So, with that being said, take care and see you later.