a Cherokee singer, interior designer, activist, and writer. Her English name Iva J. Rider appears on the final rolls of the Cherokee Nation. Born in Indian Territory, she attended government-run Indian schools and then graduated from high school in Muskogee, Oklahoma. She furthered her education at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. After a thirteen-month engagement with the YMCA as a stenographer and entertainer for World War I troops in France, she returned to the United States in 1919 and continued her music studies. By 1921, she was living in New York City and performing a mixture of operatic arias, contemporary songs