A new installation will retell the story of three Wyandot Nation sisters who defended a tribal burial ground in downtown Kansas City, Kansas.
The public art project, which organizers are calling a “mobile monument,” will tell the story of Lyda, Helena, and Ida Conley, who occupied Huron Indian Cemetery, now known as the Wyandot National Burying Ground, in 1906 to save it from development.
“They built a literal fort that was only 6 feet by 8 feet,” says Neysa Page-Lieberman, Artistic Director of Monumenta and co-director of the project.
The Conleys wanted to stop plans by William E. Connelley, a historian and land surveyor with power of attorney for the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma, who had successfully passed a clause into federal law that stripped the cemetery of its protected status and ordered the bodies buried there to be excavated.
Thanks to the Conley sisters — who presented a formidable force — that didn’t happen. Armed with their father’s shotgun, they lived in their makeshift fort, protecting the cemetery from trespassers.
“They lived there year-round,” says Page-Lieberman, “so they were physically defending it, but they were also legally defending it.”
To mark the Conley’s bravery, the new project will reimagine the sisters’ so-called “Fort Conley” in a multimedia installation that will include reenactments, recorded interviews and commissioned music from Wyandot musicians.
The project, “Trespassers Beware! Fort Conley and Wyandot Women Warriors,” has received a $200,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation’s Kansas City Monuments Coalition. Organizers plan to unveil the monument on Aug. 30, at the Wyandotte County Historical Museum, in Bonner Springs.
The KCUR podcast A People’s History of Kansas City told the story of the Conley sisters’ fight in 2020.
To help bring the sisters’ story to a wider audience, organizers plan to take the exhibit on the road to reach communities in the Wyandot diaspora in Quebec, Kansas, Oklahoma and Michigan.
Lyda said ‘no’
Lyda Conley eventually earned a law degree and led the Wyandot’s case in court. She argued selling the cemetery would violate prior treaties and her case advanced to the country’s highest court in 1910. Conley was the first Native American woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Chief Judith Manthe, of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas, co-directs the project, and is a cousin of Lyda Conley.
“The bodies of our ancestors are sacred and they need to remain where they are," Manthe says. "When that was brought up, and they were going to remove the bodies, Lyda said ‘no.’”
Manthe says the Wyandot were a matriarchal society and it was normal for women to have prominent roles in the religious and political affairs of the tribe.
“If I believe in something, I'm going to fight for it,” she says. “And that's exactly what Lyda, Ida, and Helena did, was stick up for their rights, their strong being to protect their ancestors and their family members.”
