Las Vegas schoolteacher Elliott Nilsson believes people in the United States should be more aware of the hardships that many indigenous people faced at government-backed boarding schools in years past.

Decades after the last Native American boarding schools stopped receiving federal money, the trauma and abuse inflicted by the institutions are receiving attention through events like the one that took place Tuesday evening at the Las Vegas Indian Center, on West Bonanza Road near Rancho Drive.

But Nilsson, 48, a Canadian-born son of two boarding school survivors in his home country, believes many still don’t know about the abuses that were so common at the schools in Canada and the U.S.

In both countries, Sept. 30 is the day in which the victims and survivors of Native American residenti

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