The Ten Stages of Genocide: Definitions, Ho-Chunk History, and What It Looks Like Today
This blog uses the Ten Stages of Genocide framework developed by Gregory H. Stanton (Genocide Watch). A key point in Stanton’s model is that the stages are not linear and often occur simultaneously.
1) Classification
Definition: People are divided into categories of “us vs. them.”
Past:
Ho-Chunk/Winnebago people were treated as a population to be managed and moved rather than a sovereign Nation rooted in place, kinship, and responsibility. Removal policies and “reservation solutions” grew out of this classification logic, reduce a people to a category that can be relocated and controlled. Ho-Chunk forced relocation history documents that broader removal pattern.
Present:
Federal and state systems still often operate through imposed categories first, definitions that don’t align with Indigenous ways of belonging, kinship, or clan systems.
2) Symbolization
Definition: The targeted group is marked, labeled, or reduced to identifiers.
Past:
Boarding schools renamed children, punished language, cut hair, abused children in many different ways and enforced uniformity. Carlisle is a documented federal model of forced assimilation impacting thousands of children from many Tribal Nations.
Present:
Enrollment numbers, ID cards, and blood fractions can become treated as “who someone is,” even when culture, kinship, and community responsibility are present.
3) Discrimination
Definition: Laws and policies enforce unequal treatment or deny rights.
Past:
Removal and confinement were implemented through policy and enforcement. In 1863, Ho-Chunk people were moved under threat of military force and sent to Crow Creek; MNopedia documents that more than 550 Ho-Chunk died during the removal.
Present:
Discrimination can persist through structural inequities; jurisdictional gaps, unequal access to resources, and policy impacts that disproportionately burden Indigenous communities.
4) Dehumanization
Definition: The group is portrayed as inferior, dangerous, or less deserving of dignity.
Past:
Assimilation ideology framed Indigenous culture as something to erase. Carlisle’s mission and practices show how dehumanization was baked into the system: forcing children to abandon language, dress, and identity.
Present:
Dehumanization can show up through stereotypes and disrespect, but also internally when people are treated as less worthy because they are “not enough” by colonial measurements.'
5) Organization
Definition: Genocide requires structure; institutions, funding, rules, and enforcement.
Past:
Federal agencies and institutional systems (including boarding schools) scaled assimilation. Carlisle is documented as a large, long-running institution drawing students from over 140 cultures.
Present:
Bureaucracies still shape identity, services, and recognition. Harm can be carried forward through systems even when individuals within them have good intentions.
6) Polarization
Definition: Divisions are intensified to weaken unity and make harm easier.
Past:
Polarization was fueled through settler hostility, the undermining of traditional governance, and constant disruption of family systems through removal and institutions like boarding schools.
Present:
This is one of the stages that can show up most clearly today across Indian Country:
enrolled vs. unenrolled, “real” vs. “not enough,” Christian vs. traditional, urban vs. reservation.
This kind of internal division is often called lateral oppression or internalized harm; not because our people are the problem, but because colonization trained communities to fracture.
When we divide ourselves using colonial measurements, we continue a process that was never meant to protect us.
(Framework reference: Polarization; stages may overlap.)
7) Preparation
Definition: Conditions are set to make elimination possible (often quietly, through policy).
Past:
The Dawes Act (1887) promoted allotment, treating Native people as individuals rather than as members of Nations, breaking land bases and enabling further dispossession.
Present:
One form of “preparation” today can be paper-based shrinkage: when belonging is reduced to fractions and eligibility narrows over generations. In governing documents, “one-fourth (1/4) Winnebago/Ho-Chunk blood” appears in membership-related enrollment provisions.
A simple example of how fraction thresholds shrink over generations (if membership requires 1/4):
1/2 → 1/4 ✅
1/4 → 1/8 ❌
1/8 → 1/16 ❌
You do not need violence to eliminate a people. You only need time, paperwork, and a formula.
(Framework reference: Preparation → Persecution/Extermination can operate together.)
8) Persecution
Definition: The group is targeted through removal, confinement, coercion, or systematic harm.
Past:
Winnebago/Ho-Chunk people were forcibly moved to Crow Creek in 1863; the documented death toll during removal is a direct example of persecution through forced displacement.
Past:
Government investigations documented unauthorized sterilizations of Native women by IHS regions in the 1970s.
Native children were also removed at alarming rates, leading to ICWA in 1978 to protect the stability and security of Native families and tribes.
Present:
Family separation harms don’t vanish just because a law exists. Child welfare and family integrity remain ongoing fronts where Indigenous sovereignty and continuity are still contested.
9) Extermination
Definition: The destruction of the group; through killing and/or the destruction of continuity.
Past:
For Indigenous Nations, extermination has included deaths during removals, starvation conditions, institutional abuse, and the shattering of language and family systems. Ho-Chunk deaths during the 1863 removal are specifically documented.
Present:
Extermination can also be slow: language endangerment, disconnection from kinship duties, and paper-based narrowing of who is recognized, especially when paired with displacement and family separation.
10) Denial
Definition: The harm is minimized, reframed, or blamed on the victims.
Past:
Boarding schools were framed as “education” and “civilizing,” despite the documented purpose and impacts.
Present:
Denial shows up as: “That was a long time ago,” “It wasn’t genocide,” or “Talking about policy is attacking the tribe.”
Public recognition of the boarding school era is still unfolding. Carlisle’s designation as a national monument is one visible example of long-delayed acknowledgment. Across the country, sites that were once places of trauma and harm for Indigenous peoples are only now being formally recognized. For many of us, that recognition can feel complicated; like history is finally being named, yet also minimized at the same time. When acknowledgment arrives generations later, it can still carry an undercurrent that we should have already “moved on,” as if historical trauma has an expiration date.
Reflection: Choosing a Different Future
If genocide can operate through division, policy, and internalized harm, then healing also has to be a process; through awareness, courage, and choice.
There are ways we harm each other today that did not originate in our traditional systems. Sometimes we repeat colonial measurements as if they were culture. Sometimes we gatekeep belonging through paperwork. Sometimes we silence hard conversations because conflict feels dangerous, especially when our communities have survived generations of enforced trauma.
Naming that isn’t betrayal. It’s responsibility.
And it’s also a choice point.
Restoring matrilineal balance and clan responsibility is not just symbolic. It’s practical. It reshapes how we care for children, how we hold relationships, how we define belonging, and how we protect the future.
Sometimes caring for one another again requires taking a hard look at the parts we play in internalized harm and lateral oppression. That can be uncomfortable. But it’s also where change starts.
Returning to our language. Returning to our clan duties. Returning to the deeper values that existed before colonization tried to rewire us, these are not just “nice ideas” or words we use to make us look good on paper. They are acts of continuance.
We can find our way back, to each other, to our people, and to the responsibilities that keep us whole.
Genocide is a process.
But so is healing.
And the future is shaped by which process we choose to continue.
Sources & Framework
Ten Stages of Genocide (Gregory H. Stanton / Genocide Watch) - model notes stages are not linear and can occur simultaneously.
Unauthorized sterilization of Native women (NLM summary of GAO findings; GAO document).
ICWA background and purpose (NICWA; supporting fact sheets).
