Forced assimilation is the involuntary cultural assimilation of religious or ethnic inferior groups, during which they are forced by a government to adopt the language, national identity, norms, mores, customs, traditions, values, mentality, perceptions, way of life, and often the religion and ideology of an established and generally larger community belonging to a dominant culture.
The Sámi people have been victim to forced assimilation tactics by the governments of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia during the 19th and first half of the 20th century. Today, their culture and languages are instead promoted, legally protected, and taught in schools.
Image: Saami Family 1900
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part.
Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide in 1944. His analysis of atrocities inflicted on the Poles were adopted by the UN Genocide Convention as its criteria for determining "genocidal intent"
Aftermath of the 1941 Odessa massacre, in which Jewish deportees were killed outside Brizula (now Podilsk) during the Holocaust
Members of the Sonderkommando burn corpses of Jews in pits at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, an extermination camp.
As part of the Native American genocide, the U.S. federal government promoted bison hunting for various reasons, including as a way of destroying the means of survival of Plains Indians to pressure them to remain on Indian reservations.
