Remembering Honor: A year after blizzard ravaged Rosebud, boy’s death raises questions

Part one of a two part series

MISSION, S.D. – A cracked and peeling wooden sign signals the entrance to St. Thomas Catholic Cemetery in Mission, where Rose Cordier-Beauvais paid her respects.

The November sky was spotless for a visit to the gravesite of her grandson, Honor, who died Dec. 15, 2022, at age 12 during winter snowstorms that ravaged the Rosebud Indian Reservation in south-central South Dakota.

Honor Beauvais was one of six people who died during the 2022 holiday blizzards, which shut down roads and stranded residents, some of whom ran out of propane to heat their homes. Gov. Kristi Noem declared an emergency on Dec. 22 and activated the state’s National Guard to haul firewood and remove snow.

The death of Honor, a sixth grader with asthma living with his aunt and uncle on the reservation, has come to encapsulate the challenges and shortcomings of the disaster response, whether from state, federal and tribal officials or the Indian Health Service.

“Nobody ever said they were sorry,” said Cordier-Beauvais, 70, who works as business manager for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. “They were too busy trying to get their story straight.”

She recounted how Honor was taken to the IHS emergency room in Rosebud on Dec. 14 with flu symptoms and breathing difficulties. He was evaluated, given medicine and released.

He stopped breathing the next day and died, with massive snowdrifts preventing an ambulance from reaching the family’s ranch until it was too late.

Cordier-Beauvais, represented by Sioux Falls attorney Brendan Johnson of Robins Kaplan LLP, is pursuing a medical malpractice lawsuit against IHS. The lawsuit is expected to be filed in the next 60 days.

“Honor’s death was an avoidable tragedy,” Johnson told News Watch. “We will bring all necessary resources to bear to see justice is done, changes are made, and that Honor’s death was not in vain.”

Indian Health Service officials declined a request for comment through the agency’s public affairs office.

Cordier-Beauvais contends that her grandson should have been held at the hospital rather than released due to severe weather and the probability that follow-up care would be needed.

She also accused Rosebud tribal officials of inadequate disaster preparedness and a lack of emergency services the night Honor died, when her family’s pleas for help were not enough to prevent tragedy.

Robert Oliver, head of the tribe’s Emergency Preparedness Program at the time, told News Watch that such characterizations are unfair to the difficulties his crews faced.

The Rosebud reservation in Todd County, with about 9,500 residents and one of the nation’s highest poverty rates, received snowfall of 2 to 3 feet, with winds gusting to more than 60 miles an hour.

“It wasn’t us,” said Oliver. “It was the storm.”

The one-year anniversary of Honor’s death comes amid renewed scrutiny of IHS, which provides free health care to enrolled tribal members as part of the government’s treaty obligations to Native Americans.

Those rights were reinforced by an 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in 2021 after the Rosebud Sioux Tribe sued IHS following the temporary closure of the emergency room at the 35-bed Rosebud Hospital in 2015.

South Dakota’s congressional delegation introduced a bill last year to address staffing, accountability and patient care within the IHS system while instituting new whistleblower protections. That legislation has not advanced past committee.

For Cordier-Beauvais and her family, many of these declarations ring hollow. None will bring back her grandson, who moved from Denver to Rosebud in 2018 with a hopeful outlook that lifted the lives of those around him.

“It was an instant bond,” said Brooki Whipple, Cordier-Beauvais’ daughter, who along with her husband, Gary Whipple, welcomed Honor into their home and treated him like a son.

The boy was born Oct. 27, 2010, and given the Lakota name Yuonihan Ihanble. The first word means “to honor” and the second, according to translation, summons a dream “like a poetic whisper, invoking a sense of wonder and imagination.”

His name, then, was Honor Dream. Everyone called him Honor.

Concepts of home and family came in patches, tailored over time. Honor was one of four children born in Denver to Cordier-Beauvais’ son, Robert Beauvais, and his common-law wife, Shennah Jordan. Their relationship unraveled as Robert attended college and worked toward law school, struggling to give the kids the stability he knew they needed.

Family bonds in Rosebud shone through. Along with his younger brother and two sisters, Honor spent summers and holidays in South Dakota with his grandmother, surrounded by cousins and aunts and uncles. Cordier-Beauvais and her clan also traveled to Denver for long weekends or birthdays.

In March 2018, she visited her son in Denver and realized that it would be best for the children to return with her to Rosebud, this time maybe for good. She noted that relatives rallying around parental roles is common in Native culture, keeping kids on a positive path.

The plan was for the children to stay with their grandmother in Antelope, a tribal community near Mission. They were enrolled at Todd County Elementary School.

But Honor had his own vision.

He was close to his cousin, Arisele, or “Ari,” the daughter of Gary and Brooki Whipple. Honor and Ari both had the middle name Dream and were born two months apart. Soon family members took to calling them “the twins.” Honor spent a lot of time at the Whipple Ranch in Two Strike, a few miles north of St. Francis, where Ari attended school at Sapa Un Jesuit Academy.

Gary started out driving Honor to school in Mission and then returning to take his daughter to St. Francis before heading to work. Eventually it was decided that Honor would enroll at Sapa Un and live full-time with Gary and Brooki Whipple, who welcomed him into an active household that also included a dachshund and miniature terrier.

“Honor started bringing more and more stuff to our house,” said Gary Whipple, who works as course superintendent at Prairie Hills Square Golf Course in Mission. “Finally one day he was just like, ‘I’m living here now.’”

Honor and Ari sang “Happy Birthday” in Lakota at family celebrations and taught younger kids to do the same. He enjoyed video games such as Fortnite and later Call of Duty with Gary but made sure to play LEGO games with younger cousins, not wanting them to feel left out.

The spirit that endeared Honor to family members came in a fragile frame. He was smaller than most of his classmates and struggled with asthma, requiring pediatric care in Colorado before moving to South Dakota. He used an inhaler to deliver medication to his lungs.

“We would have to restrict his outdoor time when the weather got chilly, and we had an air purifier at the house,” said Gary Whipple. “He loved the dogs, but we had to keep them out of his room because of the dander.”

Honor went full speed on the basketball court, a passion he shared with Ari and Gary while playing for the Sapa Un team. The barn at the Whipple Ranch contained a basketball hoop, safe from the elements and perfect for sharpening skills.

“He would go in there and shoot around and work on his moves,” recalls Gary Whipple, who played basketball at St. Francis High School and graduated in 2007. “He saw the potential to be successful on the court and what that looked like. He wanted to be the guy, and he most definitely could have been.”

(This article was produced by South Dakota News Watch, a non-profit journalism organization located online at sdnewswatch.org. Contact SDNW at info@sdnewswatch.org)

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