This free-access research article surveyed 145 K-12 teachers from the U.S. West Coast region. The authors posed two questions: 1. Do you agree with the following statement? Physics is an objective science free from subjectivity and bias, and 2. What does culturally relevant instruction mean to you? Most respondents believed physics knowledge is objective, to be viewed without subjectivity. The researchers then compared results to the Ladson-Billings Framework of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP)", which lists three key conceptions of CRE: conceptions of self and others; conceptions of knowledge, and conceptions of social relations.  Instructors can support students with positive learning experiences when they are cognizant of all three conceptions. Many teachers shared only two productive conceptions: conceptions of self and others and conceptions of social relations. However, the researchers found two instructors who effectively described all three conceptions. These particular teachers' conceptions of knowledge focused on physics knowledge as constructed, reconstructed, and in some aspects containing subjectivity. They both articulated a critical approach to examining the historical and contextual factors that influence physics learning today. The findings of this study indicate that instructors' beliefs about the nature of science can be entangled with their own enactment of CRP. The authors discuss how a sophisticated epistemology can be one route to more culturally relevant instruction.