What policies do the colonizers make to achieve that?
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Submit or die. Convert or die. It’s really that simple when Catholics have an entire history chapter of dark ages where it had the least creativity of reading materials, and when it’s recognized as a time in history of the greatest innovation for torturing and killing captured witches. This goes on even towards the 13 colonies in north America with quakers and the infamous Salem witch trials.
“If you practice your old religion, we’ll kill you. Instead, you are forced to sit through a Christian church service every week, and to attend Christian church functions.” was a popular one in many places where European powers colonized the land.
Extortion, basically. On the kinder end they’d push them off the land they made their living with and then offer meals and other necessaries for church attendance. On the less kind end they’d give a “convert or die” option, take their children and raise them in the religion or often both.
There were some genuine attempts at benign missionary work, but that sort was more associated with places that were trade contacts missionaries could reach. Once colonization began and we had enough people to play hardball, we did so almost immediately.
In addition to what others have said here, there are also less violent means. For example, with colonization the most powerful/wealthy people are the colonizers. If you want to curry favor with them in hopes that they reward you with offices, contracts, or other rewards, you may feel it helps to generally mimic them. So you adopt their religion, their language etc. Or you may find that government officials treat you better if you practice the colonizer’s religion. Being similar to colonizers generally makes life under their boot easier even when it’s not as simple or violent as “convert or die”
If you’re talking about European colonization, it usually didn’t. There was very little interested in converting the natives and those interested in doing so were normally missionaries.
Many natives did adopt Christianity because it was advantageous to do so. The European (Christians) were the ones who ran the schools and otherwise permitted access to more knowledge, wealth and technology.
Another thing is to destroy their history. Couple that with destroying their religious leader. A lot of religions follow the same formula where there is a person who ‘knows’ more than the rest; priest, shaman, etc.
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