On January 2, 1961, Congressman Ben Rifle began serving his first term in the U.S. Congress. Born in a log cabin near Parmelee, South Dakota, in Rosebud Reservation Territory Rifle was the first person of Lakota descent to serve in Congress. The son of Lucy Burning Breast and Lakota Sioux and William Rifle of German descent. He was enrolled in the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.
His Lakota name means Lone feather in English. Ben Rifle attended school in Todd County, as well as the Rosebud Reservation Boarding School. He graduated from the eighth grade speaking both English and Lakota. After three years working on his family's farm, he entered the School of Agriculture, a vocational high school in Brookings. Then South Dakota State College, where he was elected the president of the Students Association.
During his senior year, he worked for the Department of the Interior beginning in 1933, and he served during World War II, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel. After the war, he was awarded a mid-career fellowship in public administration to Harvard University, where he got his master's degree. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in 1952. He returned to the Department of Interior and retired as the Aberdeen, South Dakota, area administrator of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1960.
Later that year, Rifle ran for Congress in South Dakota's first Congressional District. That included all of the counties east of the Missouri River. He was a thinker who prepared himself well on legislative matters. He could always offer a substantial and thoughtful basis for his stand on issues in Congress. Rifle held several committee assignments, and he advocated for farmers opposing cuts in farm support programs pushing for the Oahe Dam to supply water for irrigation.
At the same time, he continued to work for American Indian Education, supporting programs that enrolled American Indian and non-Indian students together in modern progressive facilities, rather than keeping children in Indian only boarding schools. Rifle was instrumental in getting the Center for Earth Resources, Observation and Science, or Eros, located in the state of South Dakota, and he gained support to keep Ellsworth Air Force Base as an active military base in Rapid City.
He was also instrumental in securing passage of legislation to create the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Arts Council. Congressman Ben Rifle died in January of 1990 at age 83.
Production assistance comes from Brad Tennent, professor of history at Dakota Wesleyan University