Wyandot Nation Of Kansas & Monumenta Announce Major Grant From Mellon Foundation And UMKC's Kansas City Monuments Coalition

The Wyandot Nation of Kansas and Monumenta has announced the commemorative public art project, Trespassers Beware! Fort Conley and Wyandot Women Warriors has received a major grant from the Mellon Foundation as part of Kansas City Monuments Coalition through the UMKC Center for Digital and Public Humanities.

The unveiling date for the monument has been set for Saturday, August 30, 2025 at Wyandotte County Historical Museum. More information, tour schedule, photos, concept renderings and more can be found at Trespassers Beware!

About the Monument

Trespassers Beware! illuminates the story of the Wyandot Conley sisters who occupied the historic Wyandot National Burying Ground in Kansas City, Kansas, saving it from urban development and erasure. The 2-acre cemetery exists today because of the efforts of Lyda, Ida and Helena Conley's decades-long activism and legal arguments to defend and protect their family's sacred land. The art project is a multi-site, multidisciplinary and community-embedded public art work that re-imagines Fort Conley through the re-creation of the fort with multi-media storytelling and engagement. The installation will travel to multiple communities, beginning in the Kansas City region. The project is co-directed by the Wyandot Nation of Kansas and Monumenta, who have commissioned the Omakyehstih Collective - We Are Gathered Together to create the monument. 

About the Grant

The Wyandot Nation of Kansas and Monumenta celebrate receiving the $200,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation as part of the $4 million award to the University of Missouri-Kansas City to support the creation of the Kansas City Monuments Coalition. The grant helps fund 16 historic preservation and commemorative projects across Kansas City. The grant was awarded as part of the Mellon Foundation's Monuments Project to the UMKC Center for Digital and Public Humanities, thanks to the work of Diane Mutti Burke, Ph.D., Sandra Enríquez, Ph.D. and David Trowbridge, Ph.D. and Michael Sprague.

The UMKC team founded the Kansas City Monuments Coalition to ensure the funding go as far as possible and to as many community organizations as possible. “Our team has established relationships with our community partners and over the years we have talked about their needs and ideas,” Trowbridge said. “The most exciting part of the grant is getting them financial support and collaborating with them as they do this important work.”

The monument title Trespassers Beware is a tribute to the sign that the Conleys hung on the cemetery gates during their armed occupation, while living in Fort Conley to keep guard. Simultaneously, Lyda Conley earned a law degree and prepared a case stating that selling the cemetery violated prior treaties. By 1910 her case advanced to the nation's top court and Conley became the first Indigenous woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Chief Judith Manthe of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas stated, “Eliza Burton ‘Lyda' Conley and her sisters, Helena and Ida, grew up with the mindset of all women of the Wyandots, a matriarchal and matrilineal society known for their proud, disobedient and ill-tempered women. They held deep reverence for the burial of their dead; the graves of their loved ones were their only monuments, and so tradition was their only history. When the sisters built and moved into the 6 x 8 ft structure known as Fort Conley, they positioned it to see all parts of the cemetery, and for years they guarded their ancestors' graves and held the bluff of an army. The tenacity of these women - my first cousins three times removed - saved the cemetery. I am honored to tell their stories.”

Monumenta Founder and Artistic Director Neysa Page-Lieberman shared, “The Conley sisters' epic battle to save their sacred land is a story that commands a monumental place in history and in cultural representation. The Conley's physical and legal battles influenced major movements in this country including tribal sovereignty, women's rights, preservation acts, and how we participate in democracy. It is only through the Wyandot's tireless efforts to preserve and honor their legacy that we now have this opportunity to commission a large-scale art installation. I am honored to partner with Chief Judith Manthe and the Omakyehstih Collective to celebrate and center this extraordinary story in our commemorative public art landscape.”

Omakyehstih Collective - We Are Gathered Together: Bettizane “BZ” Smith, Me(n)didehti, Justine Smith and Rane Wilson, three generations of deer and big turtle clan, enrolled members of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma. 

The Omakyehstih Collective states, “We honor our shared history with the Wyandot Nation of Kansas through telling the tale of the heroic Conley sisters who stepped up as leaders and culture bearers to protect their family's graves from profiteers, while battling prejudice, greed, opportunism and denied sacred rights. Our work takes audiences on a journey through Wyandot/Wyandotte history, embracing visual arts, audio, film, high-tech immersion, architectural replication, storytelling, and Native music. Designed with indoor and outdoor engagement and multiple entry points for accessibility, visitors go inside a Fort Conley replica to witness the stark conditions the sisters endured, and outside into the expansive world of traditional Wyandot/Wyandotte life in nature. Through public art we honor the Conley sisters' legacy, determination and courage to protect their kinspeople's final home–Souls at rest echoing the perseverance of Indigenous people.” 

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