Sherman Indian High School was California’s first off-reservation Native American boarding school. Founded in 1892 in Perris by the Bureau of Indian Education as part of the American Indian Residential School system, it was relocated to Riverside in 1903. Today, it is significant as one of only four active remaining Native American boarding schools in the US. Historically, such schools aimed to assimilate Native children into Christian settler colonial culture by removing them from their families, stripping them of their languages and traditions, and training them for menial labor, often amid rampant abuse. Not until the 1970s, after persistent advocacy from Native communities, did legislation like the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (1975) and the Indian Child Welfare Act (1978) begin to restore some tribal autonomy and protect against forced family separation.

The present-day mission of the school system is to “teach, embrace, and preserve the indigenous language, customs, and tradition.” Native American staff, board members, and students now manage the school in a spirit of shared decision-making and community. Sherman is a second home to high school students from reservations all over the United States, many of whom had parents and grandparents who attended as well.

In 2022–24, UCR MFA alumna Sofia Valiente was a Gluck Fellow artist-in-residence at the school in a continuation of the twenty-eight-year relationship between Sherman and UCR Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts. Valiente worked closely with art teacher Monica Royalty’s film photography class, providing the students with cameras and encouraging them to take the lead on assignments. Valiente, herself a former boarding school pupil whose recent social documentary work focuses on behavior modification programs, was perfectly suited to the role. Working collaboratively alongside the students, Valiente encouraged them to document their lives on campus and take the cameras home to their reservations during their holiday break. The result was nearly eight-hundred images that depict the everyday lives of these high school students, conveying teenage angst, friendship, creative expression through experimentation and traditional native arts, life on their reservations, and more. Off Reservation presents a selection of vibrant images by Valiente and her fourteen student collaborators alongside student responses and reflections.