Co-directed by the Wyandot Nation of Kansas and Monumenta, in collaboration with lead artists Omakyehstih Collective, Trespassers Beware! Fort Conley and Wyandot Women Warriors is a mobile monument that illuminates the story of the Wyandot Conley sisters who occupied their family’s cemetery in Kansas City, Kansas to save it from urban development. While physically defending the burials, Lyda Conley took their fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and became the first Indigenous woman to argue a case before the highest court in the land. The monument reimagines Fort Conley, the small dwelling the sisters built inside the Wyandot National Burying Ground and inhabited for years to defend their family’s graves. Their decades-long activism and legal arguments protected this sacred land, impacting preservation and tribal sovereignty movements.
This multimedia installation is based on a replica of the historic fort and incorporates video, music, writing, interpretation, oral histories, an original performance, and more to share the story.
Trespassers Beware! is generously funded by the National Endowment for the Arts/ArtsHERE, in partnership with Mid-America Arts Alliance, the Mellon Foundation, Humanities Kansas, Kansas Studies Institute, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College, the Wyandot Nation of Kansas, the Kansas Arts Commission and individual donors.