Western movie Sioux indian in Saxony

Documentary filmmaker Bettina Renner
A Sioux in Saxony
  What makes the grave of a chief of the Oglala in a cemetery in Dresden? The answer to this question led to a documentary filmmaker Bettina hit wide on a journey.

Transfigured Karlmaytum Edward Two Two and a tribal brother play for Hagenbeck Indians
No, Karl May has to do with this story, for once, nothing, although it has its origins 100 years ago. But this is about a "real" Indians: Sioux chief Edward Two Two lived from 1851 to 1914, or so it says on his grave stone in the middle of the new Catholic cemetery in Dresden and below like in the Lakota language the inscription "To Paradise Angels lead you. " It is a plain sandstone rimmed with green and overgrown grave in which - put a small American flag - with special permission of the cemetery.

That the director Bettina Renner was attentive, as she turned in 2007 to the cemetery a movie. The thirty-seven, in Dresden, Ohio and American studies, and once wrote her thesis on the role image of Indians in Indian films, was electrified. The question of why an Indian chief was far removed from the home and tradition of his people laid to rest, gave more answers ready, as she first thought.

The search took five years of files and archives up to America, to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where descendants of Edward Two Twos live. They knew that it was the wish of her famous ancestor, to be buried in Dresden, but just talk about times they would not. "They said, 'It is our history, and we decide who we tell them,'" says Bettina Renner, who was only stunned, but now understands this. "I realized this only as a matter of course, we serve our authors, often in the stories of others."

Time of the early break
By cooling the Two Twos then heated descendants but for the idea. A good six weeks living Bettina and her team finally hit with a trailer in the reserve, and they learned not only Two Two's history, but also how much the lives of Indians in Pine Ridge is still the equal of the white settlers their ancestors, the Native Americans, forcing some 100 years ago: In a state-dependent existence, and a constant struggle for land.

Far from home: The grave of "Chief" Edward Two Two
Edward Two Two was born in the time of the beginning of radical change in the prairie. He was one of the Oglala, a tribe of the Lakota Sioux, who was in the far reaches of the Midwest home. The men, warriors, protected, and fed their people that lived in tepees and not settled by buffaloes. The train of white settlers to the west and the first gold discoveries, but limited the tribal lands of the Indians so much that they fought, defeated and were persecuted. This period also characterized Two Two, whose family name was originally Nupalla what in the Lakota language means "One of two" means, and the whites in the registry, as they forced the Indians onto reservations, profane transferred into English.

Two Two, which his ancestors had taught the pride as a warrior and supporter tried to take his prescribed the sedentary life, he became a soldier and served in the reserve police, but fortunately it did not. Once a week, on "Ration Day" let the government spend food, the Indians now had to live in huts instead of tents and speak English. Lakota, their language was forbidden. The consequences of the radical and rapid change and re-education drowned many Sioux in alcohol, even today, despite or perhaps because of the strict ban by the Indian self-government is still one of the main problems on the reservation. If you are caught inebriated, has for eight hours in detention in the past year about the met about half of the nearly 30,000 residents.