Lyda Conley and the Fight to Preserve Huron Indian Cemetery

Tai S. Edwards will be at the Central Library on Sunday, November 15, from 2 to 3 PM to talk about her new book on Lyda Conley and the fight to preserve the Huron Indian Cemetery. It's a story that hits close to home, and if you've spent any time in Kansas City, you've probably walked right past the ground she spent her life defending.

Lyda 'Eliza' Conley was a member of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas and the first Indigenous woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. She didn't just take the fight to the courts, though; she and her two older sisters, Helena and Ida, spent about fifty years guarding the Huron Indian Cemetery—now the Wyandot National Burying Ground—after Congress authorized its sale in 1906. Along with the legal battle, the sisters physically defended the burials, building a shack they called 'Fort Conley' for round-the-clock surveillance and maintenance. When a U.S. Marshal tore it down in 1911, they simply built another.

The land eventually got some protection from the top: under the leadership of Charles Curtis, a Kaw Nation senator and future vice president, Congress passed legislation in 1913 to prevent the land's sale or development. But the grounds had to be defended again in the 1990s, when the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma attempted to open a casino there. Conley's work established legal precedents that are still used to protect Indigenous sovereignty today.

Edwards' book is part of the Lyda Conley Series on Trailblazing Indigenous Futures, and it works as both a biography and a source reader, built from primary sources and oral histories. She'll be discussing the book and the history it covers at the Central Library in the Helzberg Auditorium on Sunday, November 15, from 2 to 3 PM.