Click this link to listen to Season 3 Episode 19 featuring Dr. Tai Edwards, Stephanie Bennett, Samantha Gill, and Madeline Easley.

In this episode, Dr. Farina King and guest co-host Dr. Kiara Vigil talk with the editors and contributors of the new book Lyda Conley and the Fight to Preserve Huron Indian Cemetery, which tells the story of a trailblazing Wyandot lawyer and activist who defended the burial grounds of her family and ancestors in Kansas City. This work focuses on the life and legacy of Eliza (“Lyda”) Burton Conley, a Wyandot woman whose fight to protect her people’s burial ground continues to shape how we think about federal Indian law, sovereignty, and memory in the United States. Lyda is widely recognized as the first Indigenous woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, but as our guests remind us, she never stood alone. Her sisters Ida and Helena, and generations of Wyandot women, shared in the labor of defending their cemetery and their community, both in the courts and on the ground.

Our guests—historian and educator Dr. Tai Edwards, Wyandot Nation of Kansas member and editor Stephanie Bennett, researcher and writer Samantha (Sam) Gill, and Wyandotte playwright Madeline (Maddie) Easley—discuss how their collaborative book brings together biography, archival documents, oral histories, and theater. They talk about reading newspapers and treaties against the grain, navigating access to scattered archives, and recording oral histories with living relatives and tribal leaders. The book offers not just a narrative of Lyda’s life but a source reader and teaching tool that invites more research and classroom conversation.

Together, the editors and contributors frame Lyda’s story as a refusal to accept erasure—what they call “fighting for memory, fighting for honor.” Their work reminds us why this story matters now, in a moment when Indigenous lands, ancestors, and rights are still contested, and when community-based scholarship and art can help chart more just futures.

The University Press of Kansas launched the Lyda Conley Series on Trailblazing Indigenous Futures several years ago named in honor of Lyda Conley. Kiara Vigil, Tai Edwards, and Farina King serve as co-editors of the series, and they have hoped for a book to acknowledge and highlight the life and work of Lyda Conley. Finally, that hope is realized with this new book.

Resources:

Order the book Lyda Conley and the Fight to Preserve Huron Indian Cemetery 

Samantha Gill, blog piece titled, “Lyda Conley: Women’s History Everyone Should Know” (March 2026)

 “As a thank you for reading the UPK blog, enjoy 20% off this new book when you order directly from the University Press of Kansas website. Use code: 24BLOG2026 at checkout. Because protecting scholarship and empowering informed citizens starts with readers like you. Good through the end of 2026.”

Madeline Easley website

Native Circles Episode 20: The Lyda Conley Series on Trailblazing Indigenous Futures

Here is a short description of the book:

“A story of resilience, and unwavering courage.
Discover the legacy of Lyda Conley—the first Indigenous woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court and a fierce defender of her ancestors’ resting place in Kansas. Alongside her sisters, Helena and Ida, Conley spent decades protecting the Wyandot National Burying Ground, standing against federal forces, rebuilding “Fort Conley,” and helping establish legal precedents that continue to shape Indigenous sovereignty today.
Grounded in primary sources, oral histories, and powerful storytelling, this definitive biography by Stephanie Bennett, Samantha Gill, and Tai S. Edwards honors the strength of the Conley sisters and the enduring fight to protect sacred land.”

Here is a longer description of the new book:

“The inspiring story of Lyda Conley, the first Indigenous woman to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court and a trailblazing lawyer and activist who defended the burials of her Wyandot family and ancestors in Kansas City’s Huron Indian Cemetery. Driven by primary sources and oral histories, this biography and source reader is the definitive work on this remarkable woman.

For fifty years, Eliza (“Lyda”) Conley and her two older sisters, Helena and Ida, protected the Huron Indian Cemetery in Kansas City, Kansas, now known as the Wyandot National Burying Ground. A member of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas, Lyda Conley is the first Indigenous woman to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court, where she established legal precedents used to protect Indigenous sovereignty today.

In conjunction with her legal fight, Conley and her sisters spent years physically defending their ancestors’ burials by building a shack in the cemetery they called “Fort Conley.” When a US Marshal tore down their fort in 1911, the sisters simply built another one. While they occupied the grounds, they also tended to cemetery upkeep, maintaining it in pristine condition between 1907 and 1922. Finally, under the leadership of Kansas Senator—and future vice president under Herbert Hoover—Charles Curtis, a member of the Kaw Nation, Congress passed legislation to prevent sale or development of the cemetery’s land in 1913.

Unfortunately, the cemetery needed defending decades later when the Wyandotte Nation (of Oklahoma) attempted to open a casino on the cemetery grounds in the 1990s. The Conley sisters’ Wyandot Nation of Kansas relatives used similar strategies to protect the cemetery once again.

Using primary sources, including images, oral histories, and art, as well as scholarly analysis, Stephanie Bennett, Samantha Gill, and Tai S. Edwards tell the story of Lyda Conley, her sisters, and their perseverance. This book stands as a testament to the Conley sisters, who demonstrated the resilience and courage of Indigenous women who resisted colonialism and protected Indigenous sovereignty, blazing a trail for future generations.”

The co-editors of the Conley Series (featured on episode 20 of Native Circles from a previous season) share the following invitation as a part of the series foreword in the book:

“In 2022, we created the Lyda Conley Series on Trailblazing Indigenous Futures at the University Press of Kansas. At the time, we could not find any other academic series named for an Indigenous woman. A considerable oversight. And yet, in our teaching and research, Lyda Conley regularly reappeared.

Our series honors Eliza ‘Lyda’ Burton Conley (ca. 1868-1946), who spent much of her life carving new pathways in order to protect her Wyandot community and ancestors in Kansas. . . .

Using Lyda Conley’s life and work as a framework, this series features Indigenous trailblazers of the past, present, and future to promote new scholarship within Native American and Indigenous studies that intersects with, but is not limited to, sovereignty, education, law, and gender, as well as literature, culture, activities, and public history. . . .

This book is also a call for more research. If you are working on a project that might be a good fit for this series, please reach out to us or the University Press of Kansas. There are so many stories like Lyda’s waiting to be told.”

-Farina King, Kiara Vigil, and Tai S. Edwards, co-editors of the Lyda Conley Series on Trailblazing Indigenous Futures

Keep reading. Keep writing. Keep learning.