Trespassers Beware! Artists Panel and Reception

Learn more about the creation of Trespassers Beware! Fort Conley and Wyandot Women Warriors

3 Native American women sitting in a wooden structure. There is a wood burning stove next to them and animal skins on the wall. One woman is holding a shotgun.

Trespassers Beware! Fort Conley and Wyandot Women Warriors, 2025 installation view. Photo: Deanna Johnson

Join us at the Nerman Museum on Thursday, April 2, 12:30-3 p.m., for a panel talk with the artists who created Trespassers Beware! Fort Conley and Wyandot Women Warriors, alongside Chief Judith Manthe, Monumenta Curator Neysa Page-Lieberman, and JCCC Professor Tai Edwards. There will be a reception to follow.

This event is free and open to the public. No RSVP is required for in-person attendance.

The Omakyehstih Collective is the artists Bettizane “BZ” Smith Mendidehtih (Wyandotte), Justine Kanzawah Smith (Wyandotte), and Rane Wilson (Wyandotte, Maya). They represent three generations of enrolled members of the federally recognized Wyandotte Nation, based in Oklahoma, whose ancestors rest in the Wyandot National Burying Ground. Joining the discussion will be Judith ‘Trǫnyáęhk’ Manthe, Principal Chief of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas. Together they will discuss the art installation and its relationship to Kansas history in a conversation moderated by Professor Tai Edwards, JCCC's Kansas Studies Institute director.

Trespassers Beware! Fort Conley and Wyandot Women Warriors, a multimedia special installation, will be on view at the Regnier Center South Lawn March 24 through May 24, 2026.

Trespassers Beware! is generously funded by the National Endowment for the Arts / ArtsHERE, in partnership with Mid-America Arts Alliance, Mellon Foundation, Humanities Kansas, Kansas Studies Institute and Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College, Kansas Arts Commission, and individual donors.