Ben Reifel: From Rosebud to Congress

The main visitor center at Badlands National Park is named for a man born on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in nineteen oh six, who grew up to become the first person of Lakota Sioux descent elected to the United States Congress. Benjamin Reifel, known in Lakota as Wiyaka Wanzila, meaning Lone Feather, was born in a log cabin on the Rosebud Reservation and attended federal Indian boarding school before earning an agriculture degree in nineteen thirty-two. He began working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in nineteen thirty-three, was assigned to the Pine Ridge Reservation as a farm agent, and eventually served as superintendent at the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota.

In the late nineteen forties he received a fellowship to study at Harvard University, where he earned a master's degree in nineteen forty-nine and a doctorate in public administration in nineteen fifty-two. In nineteen sixty, Reifel ran for Congress as a Republican from South Dakota's first congressional district and won, defeating an incumbent and becoming the first Lakota to serve in the national legislature. He served five terms, from nineteen sixty-one to nineteen seventy-one, working on issues of agriculture and public lands.

His politics were conservative, which created tension with tribal leaders who opposed federal assimilation policies, but his election was a genuine milestone. Reifel died on January second, nineteen ninety, in Sioux Falls. The visitor center at Cedar Pass, the main gateway to the park that lies on lands shaped by the history of his people, was named in his honor after his death.