The clearest US example is federal Indian boarding schools. Starting with the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879, the government removed Native children from their families to strip them of their languages and cultures. Founder Richard Henry Pratt summed up the goal as killing the Indian to save the man. A US Interior Department investigation identified 408 federal boarding schools, and its 2024 report documented at least 973 Native children who died in the system.
Other assimilation policies included the Dawes Act of 1887, which broke up tribal land into individual plots, and the termination policy of the 1950s, which ended federal recognition of more than 100 tribes. Immigrants faced Americanization campaigns and English-only rules in schools.
The melting pot ideal assumes that groups should blend into one culture, which in practice has meant white Protestant norms. Many scholars contrast assimilation with integration or pluralism, where groups keep their identities while sharing equal rights. Pressure to assimilate continues today in rules on names, accents, dress and hair at school and work.