Trespassers Beware! Fort Conley and Wyandot Women Warriors
With the Wyandot Nation of Kansas
Watch the panel discussion from our project launch at at Wyandot/Wyandot Weekend!
Co-Led by The Wyandot Nation of Kansas and Monumenta, and in partnership with Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Kansas Institute at Johnson County Community College, Wyandotte County Museum and Kansas City Kansas Public Library, we are commissioning a monumental public artwork that interprets Fort Conley and which will travel to sites related to this history.
"They worked in a system designed to keep them out, where no one imagined Native women living outside society’s constraints. They were uniquely positioned to barrel through the roadblocks because no one was prepared for them."
— Madeline Easley, Wyandotte of Oklahoma theatre artist, collaborator on Trespassers Beware.
"They said, ‘We’re going into battle.’ They shut and locked the gates, and hung a sign: ‘Trespassers beware.’ They built a shack called Fort Conley."
— Judith Manthe, Chief, Wyandot Nation of Kansas, collaborator on Trespassers Beware.
"Trespass at Your Peril!" — Conley Sisters
Trespassers Beware! Fort Conley and Wyandot Women Warriors is a commemorative public art project in development. A newly commissioned Fort Conley installation will illuminate the story of the Wyandot Conley sisters who occupied the historic Wyandot National Burying Ground in Kansas City, Kansas, saving it from from urban development and erasure. Their decades-long activism and legal arguments protected this sacred land and contributed to preservation and tribal sovereignty movements.
"I will go to Washington and personally defend it... If I do not then there is no cemetery in this land safe from sale, at the will of the government.”
— Lyda Burton Conley, Attorney, first Native American woman to argue a case for the U.S. Supreme Court (pictured with sister with Helena Conley and cousin Nina Craig.
Image captions: (top, right column) From left to right: Conley Family - Helena Conley, Lyda Conley, and Nina Craig (cousin), 1930, Conley Family Collection, Courtesy of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas Archives; (left column, top) Chief Judith Manthe of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas, pictured in the Wyandot National Burying Ground in Kansas City, Kansas. Photo by Suzanne Hogan KCUR 89.3, 2020, featured in the podcast, A People’s History Of Kansas City.; (left column, bottom) Playwright Madeline Easley and Chief Judith Manthe at the Kansas City Kansas Public Library, reviewing the library’s collection of Wyandot artifacts and holding a ceremonial conch shell. Photo by Stuart Carden, 2023.
Image grid: (fist row, left to right) Courtesy of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas Archives, Conley Family Collection: 1.) Lyda Conley pictured in top row first left, 2.) Lyda Conley, Place of Employment, 3.) Lyda Conley Home 1712 N. 3rd (all 3 sisters at 1712 until 1935 or 1936); (second row, left to right) Courtesy of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas Archives: 4.) Huron Indian Cemetery Map, 5.) Fort constructed by the Conley Sisters, 6.) Side view of the fort constructed by the Conley Sisters, Courtesy of the Kansas City, Kansas Public Library; (third row, left to right) Courtesy of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas Archives, Conley Family Collection: 7.) Don Ballou painting of the Conley Sisters, 1956, 8.) Lyda in a ditch protecting the cemetery, 9.) The Wyandot National Burying Ground, Kansas City, Kansas. Photo by Suzanne Hogan KCUR 89.3, 2020, featured in the podcast, A People’s History Of Kansas City.; (fourth row, left to right) Courtesy of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas Archives, Conley Family Collection: 10.) Grave markers for the Conley Sisters at the Wyandot National Burying Ground, Kansas City, Kansas, 11.) Ottawa Chief, White Cloud, imploring to the Great Spirit near the grave markers of the Conley Sisters, 12.) Lyda Conley’s funeral May 1946; (fifth row, left to right) 13.) Grave marker for Lyda Conley, Courtesy of Neysa Page-Lieberman, 14.) Grave marker for Helena Conley, Courtesy of the Kansas City, Kansas Public Library, 15.) Grave marker for Ida Conley, Courtesy of the Kansas City, Kansas Public Library.