Lyda Conley: Saving Her People's Heritage.

The article focuses on Lyda Conley, the first Native American woman lawyer and a Wyandot tribal member, who fought to protect the Huron Indian Cemetery in Kansas, a sacred burial ground for her people. After the 1855 treaty dissolved Wyandot tribal lands and identity in Kansas, the cemetery faced threats of sale and exhumation by the federal government and Wyandots in Oklahoma. Lyda Conley earned her law degree to legally challenge this, ultimately arguing pro se before the U.S. Supreme Court in Conley v. Ballinger (1910), though the Court ruled against her. Despite legal setbacks, she and her sisters physically guarded the cemetery for years, leading to federal protection of the site in 1913, and the cemetery was later designated a National Historic Landmark in 2017.