Benjamin Reifel: Transitional Sioux Leader

Benjamin Reifel earned national recognition as one of the most noteworthy Native Americans in the history of South Dakota and surrounding ancestral Sioux County during the twentieth century. For nearly three decades he served with distinction as a federal administrator for reservation affairs. Through the 1960s he enjoyed respect from a non-Indian majority in eastern South Dakota that elected him to the United States House of Representatives, where he earned recognition as the only federally recognized Native American in Congress.  At the request of President Gerald Ford, briefly he returned to federal service for the purpose of closing the historic office of Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Photographs that accompany an excellent biographical chapter by Professor John S. Painter indicate Congressman Reifel's desire to be remembered as an advocate of ethnic integration who never lost his commitment to the cultural tradition he learned during his youth in the Cut Meat District of the Rosebud Reservation.