Larry Running Turtle Salazar
Digital files, 18.2 GB
A2017-042
1890-1945 (unknown)
Larry Running Turtle Salazar is a full blood Native American. His mother was Cherokee and his father, Apache. He was born in a small house in San Antonio on August 18, 1956. His mother was alone with young children; his father left before he was born. His mother eventually remarried a Hispanic man and the family moved to Corpus Christi in 1962. Texas was reluctant to award public lands to the Indians in the 1800s, instead measures to eradicate Native Americans by Mexican and American troops became the focus. Later into the 1900s many Native Americans faded into the Hispanic culture to avoid persecution.
When Larry Running Turtle first started school in South Texas his long hair was cut the first day of school and he was forbidden to speak the Indian dialect he had been taught at home. His step father was Catholic and the children were introduced to the church. As a young boy he became interested in the Korean and Japanese martial arts. In training Larry Running Turtle learned special skills and a spiritual perspective that he says has helped him throughout his life.
He started training in judo in 1969 and continued for 17 years. Each of the martial arts has a spiritual aspect, judo means the "gentle way." The goal is not to kill or maim but stop a fight before it starts. At thirty he started training in aikido, which means the "way of harmonious spirit or spirit awakening." During this journey Running Turtle began to meet other Native Americans, he studied with Steven Segal, a Buddhist follower. He noticed similarities between Buddhist teachings and Native American teachings and committed to a ten year Buddhist spiritual quest.
He states in his book, The Pipe and the Pen, "The discipline of martial arts and being spiritual within martial arts made it easier to bleed it into the ways of the Native culture and opened more doors for me than I could ever imagined." After retiring from martial arts and barbering which had always provided Larry Running Turtle with an income he devoted his time to Native American issues and became a spokesman. He learned that the neighborhood around Ennis Joslin Road in Corpus Christi was built on the second largest Native American burial ground in the state of Texas.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act signed by President Bush in 1990 gives Native Americans the right to reclaim and rebury their people. Larry Running Turtle Salazar decided to raise money to build a monument for the people who had been buried at that site. The monument has been started, a medicine wheel has been laid as the foundation. The monument will be named the "Ishka Monument" which is an Apache word meaning, "Until we meet again."
The digital collection contains five albums of photographs, three devoted to the Gulf Coast Indian Confederation gatherings in 2005, 2007, and 2008. Another photograph album illustrates the gathering of the Return of the Ancestors. Endorsed by the Institute of Cultural Awareness, the gathering was a sacred pilgrimage to Northern Arizona for the fourth reunion of the Continental Council of Indigenous Elders and Spiritual Guides of the Americans. The last album is of Running Turtle's family reunion in 2013. A book and an oral history interview of Larry Running Turtle Salazar telling of his childhood, his studies of Japanese and Korean martial arts and his quest for Native spiritual connection is part of the collection.
Arranged in four series: Series I: Oral History Interview Series II: Photographs of Events Series III: Photographs of Artifacts Series IV: Books
South Texas Archives, James C. Jernigan Library, Texas A&M University-Kingsville
Open for Research
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Larry Running Turtle Salazar Collection, A2017-042.XXXX, South Texas Archives, James C. Jernigan Library, Texas A&M University-Kingsville
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A2017-042 – Gift from Larry Running Turtle Salazar
Lori Atkins and Pat Allison conducted oral history interview. Lori Atkins created finding aid. Daniel Thacker took photographs of artifacts, processed born digital files and created EAD document for uploading files to STA website.