kubectl not communicating with minikube - kubernetes

Question

Learning kubernetes with kubectl and minikube locally. I can see this via kubectl:
> kubectl get all -o wide
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE IP NODE NOMINATED NODE READINESS GATES
pod/mongodb-deployment-8f6675bc5-tjwsb 1/1 Running 0 20s 10.1.43.14 chris-x1 <none> <none>
pod/mongo-express-78fcf796b8-9gbsd 1/1 Running 0 20s 10.1.43.15 chris-x1 <none> <none>
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE SELECTOR
service/kubernetes ClusterIP 10.152.183.1 <none> 443/TCP 29m <none>
service/mongo-express-service LoadBalancer 10.152.183.254 <pending> 8081:30000/TCP 20s app=mongo-express
service/mongodb-service ClusterIP 10.152.183.115 <none> 27017/TCP 20s app=mongodb
NAME READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE CONTAINERS IMAGES SELECTOR
deployment.apps/mongodb-deployment 1/1 1 1 20s mongodb mongo app=mongodb
deployment.apps/mongo-express 1/1 1 1 21s mongo-express mongo-express app=mongo-express
NAME DESIRED CURRENT READY AGE CONTAINERS IMAGES SELECTOR
replicaset.apps/mongodb-deployment-8f6675bc5 1 1 1 20s mongodb mongo app=mongodb,pod-template-hash=8f6675bc5
replicaset.apps/mongo-express-78fcf796b8 1 1 1 21s mongo-express mongo-express app=mongo-express,pod-template-hash=78fcf796b8
But when I lanuch minikube dashboard I don't see any pods, deployments, services etc...? Its like they are running off of different clusters. If I paste the YAML configs directly into minikube dashboard, then I can see everything. So strange... Why?
I can use the minikube kubectl command, but that doesn't seem like thats how this should work.
Running Ubuntu 20, kubectl 1.20, and minikube 1.17.

Answer 1

Turns out I was set to run off of microk8s-cluster instead of minikube.
chris#chris-x1 /v/w/p/k8s> kubectl config view
apiVersion: v1
clusters:
- cluster:
certificate-authority-data: DATA+OMITTED
server: https://127.0.0.1:16443
name: microk8s-cluster
contexts:
- context:
cluster: microk8s-cluster
user: admin
name: microk8s
current-context: microk8s
kind: Config
preferences: {}
users:
- name: admin
user:
token: REDACTED
So I needed to follow these steps to access a dashboard: https://microk8s.io/docs/addon-dashboard