Agencies ignore pleas of Lakota grandfather

RAPID CITY— It has been almost fifty years since Emory Dean Keoke stopped drinking and abusing drugs. The highlights of those subsequent years were the birth of his daughter, Elizabeth, and earning a double degree, a BS in nursing and a BA in Indian Studies. Keoke worked as a drug and alcohol counselor, and he wrote a book, a critically well received book, American Indian Contributions to the World, with coauthor Kay Marie Porterfield in 2002. They followed that book with Food, Farming and Hunting, published in 2005.

But those years also contained lowlights. Keoke’s health deteriorated. He is presently deaf in one ear, he has Parkinson’s disease, he is an insulin dependent diabetic, had his left leg amputated at the knee in 2001. He has prostate cancer and a torn right rotator cuff which is slowly atrophying, and he takes medication for his heart and high blood pressure. But Keoke would gladly double the misery of all that affliction to rewind the clock and fix whatever went wrong when raising his daughter Elizabeth, and to keep his thirteen-year-old granddaughter, Alicia, from again attempting suicide.

Family issues are too often a he said/she said affair, and Keoke knows all too well from his days of drug and alcohol counseling that manipulation and lying are fundamental tools for those in the throes of deep addiction.

His daughter Elizabeth is an alcoholic, and according to Keoke and some signed statements from his niece, Cass Hamel, Elizabeth has been supplying alcohol to granddaughter Alicia Geboe and her 15-year brother, Matthew Geboe. On July 20, Alicia attempted suicide, and Hamel received a Facebook message from her cousin, Lotene Hairy Chin, informing her Alicia “was at Regional Hospital,’ and that she “took a whole bunch of pills,” which Hamel said belonged “to her mom (Elizabeth), who was drunk at home.”

Hamel asked Hairy Chin to report Elizabeth for “child endangerment,” but Hamel asserts in the signed statement, that Elizabeth told Alicia she had turned in Hairy Chin for kidnapping.

Trying to sort out this morass, for the safety of Alicia, would not be an easy task, but according to Keoke, the agencies in place to have intervened in this matter had done nothing to stop the suicide attempt. Keoke documented the situation. He typed it all out on paper and got sworn statements from his niece, Hamel, and his grandson, Jason Keoke.

“I went to the Police department,” Keoke said, on March 6, 2018.  “I went to DSS (Department of Social Services), and I went to Sara Pierce (Rapid City School System). When the police officer was reading that, he tried to hand it back to me, and I said, no, you gotta keep it. He didn’t want to hear that complaint.”

From May 6, until the night Alicia attempted suicide, and ever since, Keoke states that he has never received any response from any agency concerned with child welfare.

“When my granddaughter attempted to commit suicide Saturday night,” Keoke said, “I went up there Tuesday with all of those papers. I had then in a manila envelope, and I said, please, do not release her to her mother, and they let my daughter go up there and check her out of treatment.”

When away from her mother, Keoke and Hamel assert, Alicia tells them she can’t take her mother’s drinking and wants to kill herself, but once her mother reestablishes contact, she is able to control Alicia’s responses, at least enough to convince the hospital to release Alicia back to her mother’s care.

Alicia did send Keoke an earlier text, again threatening suicide. But Keoke, said his then 12-year-old niece did not write the text, but that his daughter Elizabeth did: “Everything she said in that text is what her mother told her to say because my granddaughter doesn’t think like that.”

The text read as follows: “I feel sad that you lost the only person that actually cared for you, and I feel sad for you because my life was a waste because I had to take care of you, you know Cass is only using you for your money, right? Riley told me she only hangs around with you so you can buy her whatever she wants. Don’t be surprised when I die of suicide, because you are half of the reason and the other half is my dad. None of this is because of my mom, so stop blaming it on her. She was just accepting the life you gave her.”

The text exonerates only one person from blame, Elizabeth (Liz). But a signed statement from her son, Jason, from February 22, 2019, speaks to manipulative behavior on the part of his mother: “Liz has shown her actions are for her own best interest and not for those around her. I have personally been affected by these actions.” Jason asserts his mother agreed to share an apartment lease, and he paid $810 deposit “as a loan to my mother and was able to live at the residence as interest on the loan.” She later went to the landlord and had his name removed from the lease: “She has shown manipulative action so she would be able to live at the residence with my money for free.” Jason states that his mother has shown “she is unable to hold down a residency by her own,” and that “she never tried to pay me back the $810 but spent it on alcohol and drugs.”

Emory Keoke’s relationship with his granddaughter has also been one of manipulation: “In April my granddaughter ran away to Denver, for two months she was gone. My daughter didn’t even report her missing. I think she went down there to get drugs, probably for her mother. Back in April my granddaughter contacted me wanted me to come visit her so I went up to the mall, picked her up, and gave her something to eat at McDonald’s. I said, I got an apartment and you got your own room if you decide to live with me. She came over here, she saw her room, she brought a friend with her, and I gave her Christmas present, so she said can I put this in the car, so I gave her my keys, and she didn’t come back for a long time, and I went out, the car was gone. So the next morning she came back and brought my keys to me, so I thought the car keys were on there, but later the car was gone again. I called the police. I said I want her charged with auto theft, because that’s the only way I could get her away from her mother, and get her sober, and get her off marijuana. Eventually my car was found in Spearfish, so I had to get some resources together, and have somebody take me over to get my car, and I thank God my car was in good running shape they didn’t damage it much. The only reason (Liz) keeps those kids is to get EBT. She was collecting EBT all the time Alicia was gone, and she lets people stay with her.”

When Keoke talked about how no agency has responded in any way to his concerns, he broke down in tears. His daughter is a diabetic, he said, “but she won’t quit drinking. I don’t want her to die.”

His greatest fear is that Alicia will find her mother dead, and attempt suicide once more.

Why none of the agencies moved to protect Alicia is privileged information, but Keoke said he “would like to have a lawyer to sue these people, because they are putting my granddaughter’s life at risk, because of inactivity, they move with the speed of inertia or something, those guys don’t do anything, they are worthless.”

During the worst of his health issues, Keoke suffered from memory loss, because he couldn’t get his insulin from the VA, repeatedly misplaced his wallet, and failed to pay his rent. He was evicted and lived out of his car. Finally, last year a homeless veteran’s program got him his current residence.

“One of the things I would like to happen,” Keoke said, “if you do with this article, is anybody else that has problems with the Police department, School District, DDS, with their children, please contact me, because I would like to form some kind of committee or support group to get these people together and find out what is going on.”

Papers and other people that is the only power Keoke has left. He sits in his wheelchair, trapped in his failing body, his mind still lucid, his sense of justice and compassion still strong, but he can no longer spring up and rush out into the world to protect the people he loves. All he can do is sit and hope he never has to hear a knock at the door, and the worst news of his life, waiting just on the other side of it.

(James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota tribe. He can be reached at skindiesel@msn.com)

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