Transfer of Benjamin Reifel from the superintendency of the Fort Berthold Indian Agency, New Town, N. Dak., to the superintendency at Pine Ridge Agency, Pine Ridge, S. Dak., was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay.
At Pine Ridge Mr. Reifel replaces Ole H. Sande who has requested transfer to educational position with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, IU.s new assignment has not yet been determined. Ralph Shane, supervising highway engineer, at Fort Berthold will serve as acting superintendent pending selection of Mr. Reifel’s successor.
Mr. Reifel, who will report at Pine Ridge, January 17, joined the Indian Bureau in 1933 as farm agent. From 1935 to 1942, he was organization field agent, helping Indian tribes and bands organize tribal and business councils under the Indian Reorganization Act. After four and one-half years of military service, he returned to the Bureau in 1946 as tribal relations officer at Billings, Montana. In 1949 he took three years' leave of absence for graduate study at Harvard University and was awarded a doctorate in public administration in 1952. After a brief tour of duty in the Bureau's Washington Office, he was appointed to Fort Berthold in 1952.
Mr. Reifel was educated in the public school and the Federal Indian School at Rosebud Reservation, and at the School of Agriculture and the State College, Brookings, S. Dak., where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture in 1932. He is a Sioux Indian and was born on the Rosebud Reservation in 1906.
Mr. Sande was born at Vik, Norway in 1892. He came to the United States at an early age and received his elementary education in the public schools of Thief River Falls, Minnesota. In 1929 he received the degree of Bachelor of Education from Minnesota State Teachers College. His post-graduate work was done at the University of Minnesota.
Mr. Sande has been in the Indian Bureau since 1943, and for three years was associate director of education in the Washington Office. For the following three years he served as regional supervisor of public school relations and as Area Educationist in Minneapolis. He was named superintendent at Pine Ridge Agency in October 1950.
