NATIVE American tribal elders who were once students at government-backed boarding schools testified on Saturday about the hardships they endured, including beatings, whippings, sexual assaults, forced haircuts and painful nicknames.

They came from different states and different tribes, but they shared the common experience of having attended the schools that were designed to strip indigenous people of their cultural identities.

“I still feel that pain,” said 84-year-old Donald Neconie, a former US marine and member of the Kiowa Tribe who once attended the Riverside Indian School in Oklahoma.