 Elected to the Eighty-seventh Congress and to the four succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1961 – January 3, 1971), Reifel chose not to run in 1970.Reifel was born in a log cabin near Parmelee, South Dakota, on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.He was the son of Lucy Burning Breast, a Lakota Sioux, and William Reifel, of German descent.