Forced assimilation

Forced assimilation is the coercive suppression of a group’s language, customs, or institutions to impose another culture or identity. It differs from voluntary cultural change because participation is compelled.

Cultural assimilation: The process by which individuals or groups adopt features of another culture, sometimes while relinquishing their own. Forced assimilation is its coercive form, imposed through pressure or state power.
Canadian Indian residential school system: A network of Canadian boarding schools that separated Indigenous children from their families and sought to assimilate them. It imposed schooling that suppressed Indigenous languages, practices, and family ties.
Duncan Campbell Scott: A Canadian civil servant who oversaw federal administration of Indigenous affairs and the residential school system. His policies and statements reveal official assimilation aims in Canada.
Intergenerational trauma: Psychological and social effects of trauma that can persist across generations through families and communities. The harms of coercive schooling and family separation can extend beyond those directly targeted.
Cultural pluralism: A social arrangement in which distinct cultural groups maintain their identities while sharing a society. It contrasts imposed cultural uniformity with the continued presence of multiple identities.
Language suppression: The restriction or prohibition of a language’s use in public life, education, or other institutions. Banning a group’s language can sever cultural transmission across generations.
American Indian boarding schools: United States institutions that enrolled Indigenous children, often coercively, to educate and assimilate them into Euro-American society. They used education and family separation as instruments of assimilation.
Richard Henry Pratt: A United States Army officer who founded the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and promoted assimilationist education. His school became a model for removing Indigenous children from their communities.
Language revitalization: Efforts to increase the use and transmission of a language that has declined or is endangered. Communities use revitalization to recover languages suppressed by assimilation policies.
Multiculturalism: A policy or social condition that recognizes and accommodates cultural diversity within a society. Its ideal of cultural recognition opposes coercive demands for conformity.

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