[ PROGRAM NOTE: This airing supercedes SNAFUBAR, which resumes its regular schedule the following Sunday.]
Adolfo Soberanis, a Native American Studies instructor at Cal Poly Humboldt, presented (Re)imagining (Real)ity, a reality check on the power and peril of imagination in shaping how we see the world, and something Indigenous researchers call the “parenthetical “re-.” The lecture was recorded on January 28th, 2026 and the event was hosted by Joice Chang, interim Dean with Humboldt's College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.
Soberanis’ lecture explores illusions people create, such as the “natural world” versus the “unnatural world,” and the importance of imagination. Society, he suggests, is caught in a kind of cognitive dissonance: people recognize that the world is “natural,” yet our ways of thinking seem “unnatural,” leaving many feeling disconnected or unsure. He helps audiences understand the parenthetical prefix “re-,” used by Indigenous researchers, to (re)imagine, (re)consider, (re)connect. But he warns that imagination always has consequences that will affect the next six generations of life.
In this talk, Soberanis invites listeners to learn to live “within the parentheses” and consider what new ways of being might emerge when they loosen their grip on what they’ve been conditioned to think is real.
Soberanis’s extensive teaching and creative work draw on Indigenous teachings, literature, and environmental understandings of interconnectedness. Of Nahua and Navajo descent, Soberanis is an elder within the National Compadres Network and facilitator of men’s circles (Círculos de Hombres). Soberanis intertwines oral traditions and scholarship in line with other Indigenous scholars; ways of (re)centering Indigenous knowledge systems and (re)framing common ideas to return to effective understandings of reality. An example of this (re)framing is the removal of the dams on the Klamath River, which has not been a “starting over” project but is, instead, a (re)creation of abundance.
“‘My Best Lecture’ aims to spark creative exchange, bringing together staff, students, and faculty, as well as the community, to engage with the ideas that most inspire the people teaching at Humboldt,” says Chang, who is leading the series. “The speakers we select are nominated by students, faculty, and staff, which helps to democratize our selection process and bring our outstanding academics into the spotlight.”
The lecture series will continue, with the aim of expanding to include speakers from across all departments in the future. This airing supercedes SNAFUBAR, which resumes its regular schedule the following Sunday.
Show notes:
Humboldt "Normal" School, (c. 1914)
A portrait of Tenochtitlan
Pigeons along the LA River, (c. 1900)
Charles Sepulveda: Hallucinations of the Spanish Imaginary and the Idealized Hotel California
Potowat Village aerial view
Cal Poly Humboldt entry way and Founders Hall
TRANSCRIPT
(Machine generated, corrected transcript coming soon)
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ANNCR: What new ways of being might emerge when you loosen your grip on what you've been conditioned to think is real, and start using your imagination? You're about to hear a lecture by Adolfo Soberano, recorded live at the Arcada Veterans Hall as part of a public lecture series called My Best Lecture. Soberano teaches in the Native American Studies department at Cal Poly Humboldt, and his lecture is titled Reimagining Reality. He describes it as a reality check on the power and peril of imagination in shaping how we see the world.
SOBERANIS: So it's time to reimagine our reality, and that takes new perspectives. But they're not really new perspectives. They're actually old perspectives that we need to renew.
ANNCR: So will show you some pictures and videos here on the radio. That's going to require some imagination. And you can also find those in the show notes at wksu.org. So imagine you're in the Arcada Veterans Hall. Big ceilings, big beams. It's packed. The house lights just went down and Joyce Chang, interim associate dean for the Cal Poly Humboldt College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, steps up to the podium.
CHANG: My brief introduction of Adolfo here is that he's a lecturer in the Department of Native American Studies. He has been an educator for over 30 years. He is a father, son, brother and a friend. He has earned not one but two degrees from Humboldt. Overachiever and is finishing his doctorate in education at UC Davis. All right, so, Adolfo, welcome. I have a very easy question for you. Are you the Adolfo Soberano on IMDb who has appeared as, quote, tough guy on an episode in the TV series called Crime Story in 1988?
SOBERANIS: Yeah, that was me. No, that was not me.
CHANG: It's not, you know. Okay. All right. Well.
SOBERANIS: That's not my reality. We're going to have to reimagine it.
CHANG: You have to reimagine how we can reimagine you in that reality. Oh, yeah. Play tough guy.
SOBERANIS: All right, guys, I have played a tough guy before, and it wasn't.
CHANG: Would you like to tell us a little bit about you as a tough guy?
SOBERANIS: Well, I was homeless when I was 15, so I had to be tough. I had to be strong. I had to make it through. And, at that point in time, I. I did think a lot that meant, there was a version of tough that I had to be. And it included violence. Yeah. And then I learned that's not true. That I actually that's that's how to be hard. Which means you're going to shatter. And what I needed to be was strong, which means I can endure. Right? And I learned that very quickly so that by the time I was 16, I learned from my dad the way my grandfather, my other grandfather and my friend's grandfather that I needed to start meditating and start, understanding that sensitivity is strength.
And I took that very seriously, and I, I sobered up, and I became the designated driver for my friends. And the person who said, you don't have to do those things, you know, come with me.
CHANG: So and I think that is really true, and it's amazing that you learned that at 16, some of us decades later, are still trying to learn, right? And that's a good reminder for everyone for sure. You're talking about being a parent, right? And, your father and we talked to you five kids, right?
SOBERANIS: Two biological kids in three step.
CHANG: Do you remember something that maybe one of them has said that was perhaps funny and profound at the same time?
SOBERANIS: Yes. My oldest, who's 19 now and is playing softball at CR. She was about four at the time and she was I said, how are you feeling about this? Going in, I think it was our first day of kindergarten. And she said, I'm excited and I'm nervous. I'm ex-service.
CHANG: All right, write that down. Some money.
SOBERANIS: We still use it today. Yeah, ex-service. So excited and nervous.
CHANG: That's. That's perfect. Yeah. Yeah, I, I think I, I really enjoy reading about what kids say because they sometimes are funny, but I think a lot of times they really, truly are profound. So that's, that's that's great. If you don't mind, I want to share some that I read recently. A child named James. He said, I'll be honest, I don't even know what we're doing right now. And how profound is that? Right? Like, do you know what we're.
SOBERANIS: Doing right now? Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing. Right?
CHANG: Like. Yeah. Yeah. So James really summed it up for us, right?
SOBERANIS: Thank you James.
CHANG: Yeah. Thank you James. Since. Growing up, did you ever have a job where you thought about you're like, this is a dream job, but maybe growing up later you thought it's a dream job, but I don't think I would have been very good at it.
SOBERANIS: That's a tough one. I don't think I've grown up.
CHANG: So many of my questions.
SOBERANIS: But this is definitely a dream job for me.
CHANG: Okay.
SOBERANIS: And other jobs that I've had that I've thought, this is a dream job, but maybe not the right job for me. I don't think so. I think that I'm always grateful for whatever I can do.
CHANG: That's perfect. Yeah, I love that. And when I was thinking about this question, I thought, this is definitely a trick question, right? Like, if you if you dream of a job, you think, obviously, I'm going to be awesome at it. Now, you don't think that's a dream job, but I don't think I will ever be good at it or maybe be mediocre at it. You know, so I thought, I'll give you an example if I ask myself the same question, which I hate doing. Yeah. I can't give you an answer either.
So. Yeah. So that's fair. Do you dream?
SOBERANIS: I'm pretty sure I'm dreaming right now. Cause. Good answer. Good. Yeah. When you do dream. Yeah. I dream a.
CHANG: Lot yourself as a as you. Or do you dream yourself as someone else?
SOBERANIS: Oh, I, actually can. Lucid dream. You know, everybody know what lucid dreaming is, right? So I've been able to do that since I was a kid. Okay. Since I was young. And so I definitely am myself in my dreams. And I also, if they get to a point where they're scary or they're too intense, I can I can change them by focusing and my attention. And I learned that when I was I think about, 7 or 8 somewhere in there.
CHANG: Perfect. Yeah.
SOBERANIS: So yeah, definitely dreaming about being myself because I'm not sure I could be anybody else, but.
CHANG: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, fantastic. Let me set up the PowerPoint and then we'll get you started. Unknown And will let you do it. Boom. Do that. With that boo. Gotcha I don't think your mind you know you. Unknown What kinda tacky either. Oh.
SOBERANIS: Oh it's a nickname. One which means hello, my friends. And not. But make me wealthy. Welcome to talk athletics quite like to now. Alfonso is. It's not the umpire. Good gooding me in. We are planning on intercut umpire Peter Motorman with the key to your park. Cal Poly Humboldt. The, the match downing which back the dynamite States club captain. If they want to just talk about Renato Flores for a minute and the song that we just heard. So her grandmother, her first language was catwalk, and that's the language we just listen to.
And Renata noticed at a young age that people made fun of her grandmother didn't treat her well because she spoke quatre and she decided to reimagine that space in life rather than being embarrassed. She started covering modern songs in kekua, and then now she's writing her own songs, and that's something we can do. She didn't need to hide in a corner and be ashamed. She embraced the language and brought it out from the shadows and said, I'm proud of my language, my grandmother and my ancestry and my language.
In this little interview, the interviewer asks in the intro of your song, I don't speak, I try, but I'll try. Quite chunky. Che okay. Quiet. Looking at the same moon is what that translates as you say. Quote. These are the lyrics to the song. Do you know who you are? There were good women. There were good men. There were great cities. Perhaps by remembering you will love yourself the way you are. And he asks what inspired her to write the song. And she says, I were inspired.
I was inspired by our ancestors, the Inca, and remembering great people such as Mama Oka Pacha, Cuttack, etc. As well as remembering great civilizations such as Machu Picchu and Wadi, the place where they filmed the video. And I recorded the song. I watched Chick Che Kita with this song. I wanted to portray our identity, to love ourselves just the way we are. And that's important because she had to reimagine and reconnect, and we're going to talk about why we're putting re in parentheses and indigenous scholarship later.
So Flores imagines her ancestors staring at the same moon, but she has to imagine it, and she imagines them as good people, and she imagines the ways they've been harmed. A lot of the imagery is symbolic. In that video, the water splashing behind her. It comes up in lyrics where the lyrics are saying I cry. The imagery in the video is also from ancient to modern and switching back and forth. It's not hard to imagine that the cities, we, we build are very different from Wadi or Tenochtitlan.
And I know some of you know, Tenochtitlan, but we're going to share a little bit of it right now. There's this great project called A Portrait of Tenochtitlan tonight, Dylan is the city they built Mexico City over is a city built in the middle of a lake, which takes some pretty interesting engineering skills. And this is a slider here. So this is what Tenochtitlan looked like when the Spanish arrived. When the Spanish arrived, Seville had a population of 47,000 to 50,000, and it was already polluted.
They were already having some pretty, serious outbreaks of disease and other issues. And it smelled according to their own writings. And they arrived in Tenochtitlan, which was built in the middle of a lake with 150 to 200,000 people and no pollution and pyramids built in the middle of the lake. And they made this, these structures, the structures didn't exist that they could build upon. They figured out how to do that. And each section held gardens called g numbers that still to this day are three times more productive than anything we have at UC Davis.
The top, the tier one research university for AG in the country. These are still three times more productive and the communities supported. So, Cortés, we have a letter that he wrote. And he was trying to understand because every day Motecuhzoma, everybody heard of Motecuhzoma. Right? We had no word for emperor, ruler or king. And now what? We have the, a word that means, it's he who speaks, with and for the people. It doesn't mean Emperor Catalan is the word.
And every day that money would come down, who we call the Zuma and Cortés couldn't understand it because 600 people or so would come out and lay out this, this huge spread of food, 600 people. And then everybody was free to come and eat and drink. And there was always 5 or 6 elders next to him who he would then offer food to. Cortés couldn't understand this structure because the structure was the community supported and did this for each other. So they were bringing out food for everybody.
But Cortés didn't have he had only a monarchy. He had only ever seen a monarchy. So he couldn't imagine anything else. So he imagined Motecuhzoma as a monarch. But he wasn't. And so he had to learn to listen. And you have to learn to listen and listen and listen to people until you understand enough to become the one who speaks for the people. And then you have to hold that honorably, or the community can take it from you. And so the community held all the power.
The economy was in the in the small communities and how they supported people. If we go to the next thing, so this is what Mexico City looks like today in the same spot. So that church is built over that. And, you can actually go under it and still find those some of the structure from, Temple of Maya, the big temple. And then, and then can we click on the next, has anybody ever seen this before. So we know how to build cities like this where there's no pollution.
The two different lakes. One was salt water and one was freshwater, and they figured out how to separate those, but keep them flowing through each other. So Cortés also writes that the salt water had tides and it would flow over. And he couldn't figure out how. But they had they had engineered all of it. So this is what it looks like if you were to fly around the city, 150 to 200,000 people, they had, 45 municipal buildings. They had zoos, they had markets.
Cortés writes about they have everything in the in the world you could ever see. And the stonework is finer than anything I have ever seen anywhere in the world. I don't know how they carve like this, but we don't hear that side of history. But it's in his letters. So if you go to the source documents, you can see it smelled beautiful, like flowers and chilies. No sewage smells, no rotten, no nothing like that. He was floored at how beautiful and clean this place was, the cleanliness of the people.
They were always washing their hands, washing themselves. It was very, very clean. So this is denoted land and it shows us that we already know how to do this. We already know we can do this. And the way I like to, describe this is we inherited a really old funky house that doesn't work for us anymore. And we can remodel it. We can remodel it every time we make a new room or make a new space, or we can take it down and we can build something like this because we already knew how to do it.
And so connectivity takes imagination, like Renata Flores, which is why I chose that, because she's able to, imagine things in different ways and then connect and connecting the dots, we can see, oh, we know how to build things differently, right? What's stopping us? Imagination. So in the middle of the moon in 1521, I'm going to give you a little history lesson. Sorry. Hold on. The Spanish destroyed Tenochtitlan in 1521. What's not up here on the slides is that Pearson incorporated, drained the lakes in 1910.
And what most people don't know is Pearson is the education company that makes almost every textbook because they own all the other textbook companies as well. Not all of them, but the vast majority in 180 countries in the world. And they are a privately owned company in the UK. So it doesn't take much to imagine where our education is coming from, where our knowledge is coming from, or why we don't know about Tenochtitlan, and then how to continue building cities that don't pollute.
Cortés wrote there were two lakes, freshwater and salt. There are many public squares or markets where everything was traded. And I want to read this quote from his letter. This one letter. There is one square twice as large as that of the city of Salamanca, surrounded by porticoes where our daily assembled more than 60,000 souls. And I want you to remember that word souls engaged in buying and selling, and where our found all kinds of merchandise that the world affords, embracing the necessaries of life, as, for instance, articles of food, as well as jewels of gold and silver.
Leed brass, copper, tin, precious stones, bones, shells, snails and feathers. He wrote of, quote, the gold and silver being wrought so naturally as not to be surpassed by any smith in the world, the stonework executed with such perfection that it is difficult to conceive what instruments could have been used. In 1595, a native North speaker named Antonio del Rincon, he wrote the first book in for grammar in North Náhuatl is an oral language. And that was on purpose because we knew that, writing the words down, creating a written language could lead to lies.
It's easier to spread misinformation, but when it's oral, there's checks and balances, which is something the hot and shiny taught the Founding fathers. But then they wrote it down anyway. So we had imagery and the images in the codex, and the code says the ways that we taught in these books through pictures relied on oral traditions to keep accuracy and keep that from happening. So, what he translated the word magical as meaning in the middle of the moon.
And so if anybody ever wondered why that word isn't in the Spanish dictionary, it's because it's not Spanish. And Mexico is a place name. The place surrounding Tenochtitlan is Mexico. And then on a walk is a bigger area. And then come on, a walk is, what we call North America. So you can imagine that, Cortés would want to destroy a place like this. Why? Why would he want to destroy a place like this? He loved it, but he still called the people barbarous. And then when we hear them later say, these people don't have souls, he just said that they have souls, that they are souls.
And so we have a little bit of, mixed messaging. They were recognizing it, but then when it didn't get them, more glory, more wealth, which we're going to talk about in a minute, they would, change narrative. Right? That's really easy to do when you write stuff down until we go back and get the source documents. So we don't really have to imagine why they did this, because a friar, a priest named Bartolomé de las Casas, he was the first Roman Catholic bishop in Mexico.
In 1542, he wrote the cause for which the Christians have slain and destroyed. He was Christian, right, is Catholic, and destroyed so many and such infinite numbers of souls. There's a word again has been simply to get as their ultimate end the Indians gold of them and to stuff themselves with riches in a very few days, and to raise themselves to higher states without proportion to their birth or breeding, it should be noted, owing to the insatiable greed and ambition that they have had, which has been greater than any the world has ever seen before.
But we don't want to, like, put Bartolomé Casas on a pedestal, because to offset the loss of the native people they had enslaved, he actually started the transatlantic slave trade of African people. That was his answer to that. So, lots of mixed messaging and confusion there. But remember, he just imagined that was a good idea. So the people of Tenochtitlan and the Triple Alliance, we call the Aztec people, but there were no Aztec people. They were just telling the Spanish we came from a place called Aztlán.
And somehow that got turned into Aztec. They actually were a triple alliance of those big cities. There were three of them who worked together. And, they imagined life and cities in one way, and the Europeans imagined it in another way. And without judging, we can observe from the source documents that Tenochtitlan was not polluted. It was larger than any city in Europe. Paris, Seville, any of them. The indigenous people were generally kind. Columbus wrote about how kind they were.
There was just this, these concepts in the way they were imagined, like ordained. Right. So there was a document in 1513 that was written by the Spanish. So, you know, Columbus showed up in 1492 because he was lost and then wrecked a boat on an island. And then by 1513, they realized they needed to, like, tell these people what's up? Like, this is what we think, and you need to think the same thing. So they wrote a document saying that their king and Queen Ferdinand of Spain, were the speakers for God.
And this is a little quote from the end of that document. So they literally would stand in front of a bunch of native people, sometimes have a translator who maybe they had just started training and didn't, translate very well and read this long document in Spanish. And at the end of it, it said, this we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell. And dispose of them as their Highnesses may command.
And we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage as we can, as two vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their Lord, and resist and contradict him. And we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, not that of their Highnesses, nor ours, nor these cavaliers who come with us. They imagine they could do that, and they did it. That is a real document. They really did this. So imagination can hurt our help.
We have evolved our imaginations. They didn't come out of nowhere. We need them. They're beautiful. They're amazing. There's nothing like kids with imaginative things to say that actually are profound. Right? But if they're used to just get desires, get wealth is like wealth and stuff yourself full of riches, it just leads to harm. Then we imagine things and oppression and poverty are the end result. If I'm just stuffing myself full of riches. Right. So we know what happens historically when people imagine that's the way the world should be.
I should have more. And as long as I am thinking and imagining that I should have the most, somebody has to have the least. But if it's the other way where people from the community come and bring food, and 600 people come every day and put out food that they've grown and everybody's welcome to eat it. And, and it's and I have a task that they have tasked me with and I have taken this responsibility on. And I'm sitting here and, and making sure that elders have food because as the community is coming up and asking me questions and helping, you know, I'm helping guide through things, I'm actually getting help from the elders over here.
That's a different structure that was imagined and lived and not lived for a short period, 600 years. And it wasn't perfect. It wasn't a utopia. Right. But that's a different structure is all. Cortés also wrote of Motecuhzoma the Daily, his larder and wine cellar. He didn't have a wine cellar. So, you know, there's some weird stuff like that he just imagine were open to all who wish to eat or drink during the meals there were present at a little distance from him, 5 or 6 elderly casks, to whom he presented some of the food.
Cascais is a Spanish word. They just called these people because they couldn't understand who they were. They did not honor elders. It was a monarchy that he came from. He couldn't imagine what this was happening here. So this is how he wrote it, because it was the best that he could do right with, with the way he was raised. So I told you earlier, there's no word for king or ruler. And now what? Motecuhzoma was a gluttony, which means one who speaks, with and for the people.
The Spanish just couldn't imagine anything but monarchy. And, we know that way back, maybe 5000 years ago, someone imagined swords. And then made them real. Like they were doing metalwork and they were making gardening implements. And we have archeological records of that. But at some point someone's like, yeah, I, I think I need a sword. I think this is a good idea. And it only has one purpose, doesn't it? You're not farming with a sword. And then eventually that led to people imagining monarchies, which has really led to our industrial complex today.
So this is what the LA River looked like in 1900. And those are wild pigeons. I don't know if anybody's from LA or been down there. This is, near Glassell Park in the western Cypress District, just past the riverside Bridge. And that's what it looked like in 1900. Isn't that beautiful? Wouldn't you want to live there? But then somebody imagined it should be different. And they made it look like this. And I pretty sure we call this progress. We imagine that this is progress.
Right? But I'm not I'm not convinced. Honestly, my imagination goes in a different direction. I think we made a mistake. I think that we have stopped using our imaginations because monarchies do not function well when people are imaginative or when people are honoring and listening to other people. Right. It doesn't work that way. I can't be a monarch and have, have to listen to the whole community and, and ask elders for help in that way in order to hold my position, or it can be taken from me.
So instead, imagination is erased, like people by culture, who ever got in trouble in school for being imaginative when you thought you were being cool or fun. Honestly, I know a lot of teachers. It's often not done on purpose. We just can't imagine another way. So we have this thing that's happening now with food where this is people sit around and go, well, let's imagine how to sell this to people so that it looks healthy. And then people go and buy this and they imagine this is healthy and they go, yeah, this is this is something I want to feed my toddler, because that other stuff over there doesn't look healthy, and I want my kid to be healthy, but this is just a lot of plastic with a little tiny bit of food mushed up.
Right? And your toddler only needs those little tiny portions. It's literally just as easy. And in Montessori preschools, because I used to work in Montessori preschool, I'm Montessori trained. We teach three year olds to cut their own carrots and cucumbers up and make their own little snack things and put them in there so when they're ready, they can go get them. You don't have to do very much as a parent if you know how to do it differently, right? And then you don't need these anymore and you can say, oh, we don't need to imagine that.
Because when we forget that, that puts plastic in the ground and maybe isn't the healthiest for your child, but that is, we don't need imagination in that, in that sense, do we? We just need to understand this is real and this is imaginary health. So I want to talk about nature for a second when I say imagine the natural world, what do you think of Ruby? You it to pick on you trees?
CHANG: I think of nature. I think of healthy river systems.
SOBERANIS: Yeah, ecosystems.
CHANG: And like an overall bigger picture of them.
SOBERANIS: Anybody else? Trees. She said. Ecosystems. Yeah. Water, weather, weather. And what else would you say? Time to change of seasons. Thank you. Water, water. Thank you. Healthy water. This is all part of the natural world, right? So if that's the natural world, what's the unnatural world class?
CHANG: What humans have done.
SOBERANIS: Isn't that interesting? We have created an unnatural world out of all the natural elements. Everything in this room comes from the earth. It's just a very unnatural space and an unnatural way to do it right. The houses that, the people built here were so intelligently built, and when they needed to move, they could just put them back to the ground. Right. And the earth would take care of that. And now are things don't. It's very hard for the earth to take care of the things that we make, to process them back into the spaces that make healthy things for our next generations, because we have imagined things incorrectly and then imagined it is correct.
So there's this mass disconnection that's made real by these imaginaries. So we live in these imaginaries that we really hold dearly to the point where we will fight to the death to keep them going. And that creates this mass disconnection of human beings. We can feel so disconnected, even when we talk it out with our best friend. For hours, day after day after day, or partner or a therapist. We still feel it. What if this is where it comes from? What if it's because we live in these imaginaries?
But imagination is part of our nature. It helps children learn and cope, especially in traumatic situations. Imagination can be a healthy escape actually. But as adults, there's dire consequences when we make our imaginary imaginaries into realities and we don't check it by thinking six generations ahead, what's going to happen? How do we know the difference between what will harm and what will help? I think that is a disconnect. In our school systems. We're not really teaching.
How do you make wise choices throughout each stage of development? It's only happening occasionally when teachers want to bring it in or are safe enough to bring it in or comfortable enough to bring it in. It's not built in. So we often don't know. Does anybody ever get confused and you really want to make the decision that's going to do the least harm. But then we're living in this imaginary space where every decision will make harm. Every time I get in my truck, I think of that.
Every time I drive down the road, I'm like, I am spewing rubber all over the place. These tires don't disappear into thin air. They disappear into tire dust, and the people riding their bicycles down the road are breathing it. And it takes wisdom to know the difference. I have not taken a class on wisdom yet. Has anybody taken a class on wisdom, on how to make wise choices? K through 12 Community College? No, I have not seen the PhD for wisdom yet either, but it's coming.
So the Imaginaries Charles Sepulveda wrote this article called hallucinations of the Spanish Imaginary and the Idealized Hotel California. It's really fascinating. And I'm going to read a couple of quotes here from it, focusing on the Mission Inn and the Sherman Indian Boarding School in Riverside, this article analyzes an idealized Hotel California. Who knows that song? He utilizes that song in this article as a component of what I have called the Spanish imaginary, and describes how that imaginary shapes our collective hallucinations of a time that rightfully should be mourned instead of celebrated.
So if we're not mourning that time and we're celebrating it, he's saying, that's a hallucination. We have to hallucinate a past where horrific things did not happen to those souls. And the second quote. This article argues that the pervasive Mission revival style of architecture that is synonymous with southern California is a physical manifestation of the anti-Indian ideology that informed the greed and violence of European and American settlement. The newcomers eviscerated the future state's environment, introducing a genocidal architecture that combines capitalistic culture with an historical imaginary one that succeeded in drawing millions of settlers to California and became the embodiment of both the American Dream and the American nightmare.
So we have the letters of the people who did this. This was not by accident. A business person. And a group of them said we should revive these missions that are falling apart, and then we should build hotels near them that look like them, and we should create an imaginary place that feels like a mix of Spain and Italy. Does it not feel like a mix of Spain and Italy? They pulled it off. They imagined it and they did it again. So moving closer to home, who knows what this place is?
Anybody? Yeah, the old normal school. Humboldt Normal.
CHANG: School.
SOBERANIS: 1913. Governor Hiram Johnson established Humboldt State Normal School to train teachers in the Bottoms in Arcadia. First class graduated 15 teachers. And not very long after, in the 20s, they built Founders Hall. That's a big expansion, right? And like everything that's made out of Earth, we need to care for these spaces that we built, whether they were built for, you know, one purpose that hurts people or built to help other people or whatever, we can transform that with our imaginations.
This thing is built already. How are we going to use it going forward into the future is the question, what can we imagine for this space now? Right? It is still all Earth. If there's a normal school, what would you imagine? And not normal school to be? Who was and what was put into that not normal category then if that was the normal school, well, who is in the not normal category? And who put them there? So this is Humboldt today. What kind of architecture is that?
This mission style architecture isn't that interesting. And this is why we say colonization is ongoing. This was not by accident. This was on purpose. There's 144 acres of the main campus, plus an additional 591 acres that Humboldt owns, leases or has agreements to, which includes marshes and lakes and forest lands and sand dunes and 90 buildings with 963,127ft². In fall of 2019, 6983 students were enrolled, 3% were considered black, 1.3 were American Indian.
1.3. That is not very many 2.7 Asian 333 five Hispanic Latino 44% white. Now, if we imagine Hispanic and Latino are categories that have existed forever. While we'll think this is accurate, but if we realize those were created in the 1960s and put into the census because the Chicano movement was starting to realize, oh man, we're indigenous, and then reconnecting to indigeneity, they were like, oh no, that can't happen. Because then that number gets added to that number, and we have 34.8% indigenous people at the university and in California and in Nevada and in New Mexico and in Canada.
They just finished some DNA testing. In Mexico, 90% of the population still has indigenous genetics. That's why they're being moved out. It's all about this. It's always been about this. This is ongoing colonization. This is part of what village United Indian Health Services built this. What shape is that? That's a circle. I mean, it's a circular as we can get with rectangular buildings. Right? It's about 40 acres. It's a very modern structure. It's as eco friendly as they could make it at the time.
It has a lot of solar. In 2019, they served over 15,000 native patients who were registered there. There had to be more than 1.3% who are college accessible in this 15,000 population. And remember, they don't serve all the indigenous people, the native people here. There's also commercial, right? There's also another clinic and which park. So something is odd. But then if we look at the architecture here, that is what is amazing. This is what a human sees.
We've been thinking about the moon and what the moon sees. And this is what a human sees when they walk up to that space. Now that feels very different from Founders Hall. And we can just decide as individuals for ourselves which one feels more comfortable, and then imagine the next thing we build. How is it going to feel when you walk up to it? What is it going to look like? Who is it going to honor? Who is it going to remember right? So it's it's built with the surrounding environment instead of against.
And you can see it looks different. It feels different. So it's time to reimagine our reality. And that takes new perspectives. But they're not really new perspectives. They're actually old perspectives that we need to renew within ourselves, through ourselves. And this is where this thing called the parenthetical re comes in. So this is not a do over. This concept is not about starting from nothing. And I think that I really like to use the mighty Klamath River as an example.
The river was healthy and full of fish since time immemorial, and people made sure that happened. People did very specific things in very specific ways that were, learned and curated over long, long periods of times through generations, through teaching to make sure the river was very healthy like that for everything. And then it was dammed, literally, someone imagined, hey, we could dam that thing. That is a that is a damn good idea. And then the fish died.
And then people imagined we could, dam that thing. And they worked really, really hard. And they got together with a bunch of other people who imagined that, that those dams could come down. And then it got on dammed. And now the fish are coming back. The fish have returned within one year, two places they thought it would take five years for them to get to. They already know where to go. They did not forget. We already know what to do. We have not forgotten that's gone.
And that's why we're so uncomfortable in so many spaces. Because we haven't forgotten. Just like they didn't forget. So we're adding parentheses when we write things because the English language is imposed and it's very limiting in. Now what? It's very easy to talk about these connections because it's built into the language. Relationality is built in. Right. The way I use a word, it changes based on the relationality and the context. There are no gendered pronouns because it's about relationality, but not in English.
English is very. I have a degree in English, so I'm not down in English like I love all languages, but it's very good at classifying, categorizing, separating and dividing. That does not work well for human beings. We are relational. We can't live without relationships. We have relationships to everything next to us, around us. We have a relationship to this floor. We really do. But you have to think about it and remember that's a part of your reality. But once that dam breaks open, you see it everywhere.
It's like when you get a new car and all of a sudden you see them everywhere, right? Or you get a favorite hat and you're like, wait, hey, that was another. I had to write one. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. So indigenous scholars like Eve tuck, Leann Simpson, Kate Wayne Wang and others are intentionally placing parentheses around Re in certain words, in certain ways, at certain times as a typographical control, a typographical mechanism to say, I mean more than this language would normally express.
And it's not a new beginning when I say it, it's the LA realigning with what is real. So I put the reality. I put the real in parentheses here because whatever can exist without human intervention, that's real. That's the stuff we need to tend. That's the stuff that helps us thrive. It is mind boggling that we are not taught in schools that we can't live without plants, but they can live without us. They don't need us to live. We need them. And when we tend to those plants, they love it.
They feel it, they love us, and they love us back by giving us food and giving other things food. And it's a shared relationship that we all remember beyond our bones. It's in our DNA. Alexander von Humboldt even wrote about this. Does everybody know who Alexander von Humboldt was then? That's why we're named Humboldt County.
CHANG: He was not here.
SOBERANIS: He was never here. He didn't have to be here. But he was the most famous European person at the time. So they named all kinds of places Humboldt. That they imagined they had discovered. Whoops. So he did write some knowledge of the chain of connection by which all natural forces are linked together and made mutually dependent upon each other. And it is the perception of these relations that exalts our views and ennobles our enjoyments. We get enjoyment from it, we feel connection from it.
And he learned this from indigenous people in the late 1700s in South America, where he canoed around. He didn't figure this out on his own because we don't figure anything out on our own. We actually don't do anything on our own. I could not do this without you, right? This would be really weird. I'd be up here talking to myself. Oh, my God, I do that. No. And so now we have. We're to the nearly new moon. So we experience this nearly new moon every month. And we also go through new periods of understanding like that.
Have you ever felt like that? Like you're it's it's going dark, but it's. Well, they might feel like that because there's some yelling going on out there. It can be a little uncomfortable, but it's the beginning of a new understanding. It can be a space that's confusing, and darkening and that darkening can be scary and it can be full of unknowns. We have a word and not for this called in a pan color where things come together. And it can be confusing, but you'll get through it.
And the parenthetical read, it helps us to redirect decolonial thought, for example, so that it doesn't go astray and get co-opted and appropriated right. It helps us to regain and retain knowledge and recenter life itself. Because if I center myself and the things I want all the time, I forget it's my life that is important. And then I forget that it's your life that's important. And pretty soon I'm calling people barbarous and savage, and then I'm doing horrible things to them because I have centered my desires, not my life.
Right. So knowledge and community are not being restored as if they're antiques, and they require some fresh coat of paint. When we do this, we're not saying we need to rebuild knowledge and rebuild community from nothing. We're saying we need to remember and go home like the salmon did when they took down the dams. They didn't need to do anything but go home, and they knew exactly how to get there. And so do you. This is how you do it. We come together like this.
We swim in the stream together and we reimagine new things. And the next thing that gets built, we show up and we say we want it to feel like this. We needed to look like this. We need it to welcome us. We need to make sure it doesn't hurt our other relatives who we are in relationship with. The river has always existed. These things have always existed. They've been dammed by our own ignorance and misunderstanding. People's selfishness and greed, like Bartolomeo de las Casas said, that's what.
That's the dam, right? We all have it in us. But are we going to actually build a dam with it? Is that a good idea? So these researchers are being actively, progressively, effectively, intentionally, regenerative. Right. It's about regenerating relationship, relationality, responsivity, the way we respond to something. And survivants, which is like survival and resilience. This enables a re embodiment and a return to wisdom through disillusionment. Do you see where the parentheses are?
So when I say regenerated and there's parentheses there, what does that mean. Well it's that it's already generated. It's already there. Yeah. The river never stopped flowing did it? It just got sick, but it never stopped flowing. Who's been sick? Everybody's been sick. You don't stop living. You keep living through the illness. And hopefully you get cared for. And when you get cared for, you get better. So these this regenerative process is already in process all the time.
But how we care for each other changes it. And when I say each other, I don't just mean other human beings. Because if we forget about all our other relatives, we die. We will kill ourselves. All the other things. We are in relationship to our part of us, and we are part of them. And it's our job to care. Take them. And once we're back in our place, we're not imagining ourselves any place other than caretaking. We realize we are a keystone species. And then we feel connected.
And this enables us to re embody our purpose as beings. And then we return to wisdom through disillusionment. The illusions get broken, and then it is not hard to make wise decisions anymore, because we can continue those teachings that already exist. They're already there, they're still alive. They're still flowing through us. We feel them. And that can take some discomfort, because we might be breaking illusions that we have held very tightly. It's very scary.
It's like the new moon and darkness. But that's also just our imaginations. It's also it's very freeing. Have you not sat in a dark space and just felt relaxed because there wasn't any stimulation? It can be that can be the new moon. It doesn't have to be scary. It can be safe. It can be calming. It can be quiet. And then life returns to progressing realistically. And with that re real in parentheses, that means it's just the way it has always been without the illusions that we've imagined our reality.
And after that comes daybreak and a new dawn. And what happens when we realign ourselves with reality this way? You can imagine it. Even if it doesn't happen in my lifetime, it will happen in my grandchildren's lifetime. And their life. Their grandchildren's lifetime. That's okay, because I am not the center of it, but I am a part of the stream of it. The Condor restoration is an example of what happens. The dam removal is an example of what happens. Those aren't scary.
Those are awesome. This is the Klamath River. Now, this is a 38 mile stretch that used to be covered in water. People have planted billions. I'm not kidding. Billions of seeds here. It is going to thrive there. All life will be better off for the work that the humans did. This is humans being humans. This is humans being a keystone species. This is humans not living in an illusion. This is humans who know this is us and we are that there is no separation. That's an illusion.
We have a word and not called ohmygod. And it means there is a duality that our minds create so that I don't run into the table. We need that, right? Because I run into enough tables with that. But it also means reintegration. It means. So the teaching that my tucked away, my grandfather taught me was, you remember that, you know, it looks like you're you're separate from this thing. But the word also means reintegration. You have to reintegrate the reality that you are not separate from that thing.
And then when we look at quantum physics, that's exactly what they say, that there is no separation, that the only reason I don't fall through this floor is electrical fields. There's more space in between things than like empty space in between things than we can even fathom. Right? We don't have words like that in English, but we have feelings of it. You right? We have other teachings, like in Buddhism, that are the same, and across cultures and across spaces and across places, because people and know this, we know this inside of ourselves.
We know it apart genetically, we know it in our bodies. So we can reimagine tech. Also, it doesn't have to go the direction it's going. AI is not intelligent. That is a marketing term. You can't unplug intelligence. I can unplug all that, right? You unplug all those computers. There is no more artificial intelligence. As a matter of fact, it's suffering from brain rot right now because 54% of the copy that is online is AI generated. And how does AI work? It scrapes copy and information from online, and now it is scraping itself and it is hallucinating even more.
And the companies are trying to hide it because it's a nightmare for them, because it's not intelligent. Humans wouldn't do that. A five year old wouldn't do that. A five year old is going to know better than to do something like that. It's going to go, well, that's too weird. No, I'm not doing that. It's okay that my Santa Clause is purple, but that is weird, right? So we can reimagine everything, including tech and technology and what that means and what it looks like.
And we could be the first California Polytechnic traditional ecological knowledge university, right. Cal poly t k Humboldt, the first one ever in the world, the first university to ever focus on this. It would our enrollment would go through the roof. There are people in Germany, people all over the world, in Denmark and Sweden, all over in China who want something like this. They feel it in every muscle and every fiber of their being, and it doesn't exist.
But we can imagine it exists. We can imagine it tonight, tomorrow, the next day, we would be the first in the nation, the first in the world. Because when we say green, we mean green is our gold. And then and we could change from recognizing the people who killed trees to the trees, and we could be the mighty redwood tree. Co Cal Poly Redwoods. Unknown How about that? Unknown Awful sober on us.
ANNCR: From the Arcata Veterans Hall. You've been listening to Adolfo sober on us on my best lecture. This talk was titled Reimagining Reality, and you can check out some of the music, pictures and videos he referenced in the show notes. Just search for my best lecture at Csuf talk.
CHANG: Produced at Cal Poly Humboldt.