As sage smoke spiraled into the rafters at the University of Toronto’s Hart House, Cayuga elder Cat Criger offered a teaching.

“A hawk is still a hawk, whether it lives in the city or it lives in the forest,” Criger said.

For Ashley King and the two dozen other youth gathered around Criger, that message is a comfort.

As indigenous students they are significantly underrepresented at post-secondary schools across the country.

According to the most recent Statistics Canada data, only about 10 per cent of indigenous people in Canada between the ages of 25 and 64 have a university degree at the bachelor level or higher, compared to almost 30 per cent of non-indigenous Canadians.

Jonathan Hamilton-Diabo runs U of T’s First Nations House. Indigenous students face a lot of barriers accessing post-secondary education, he said, not the least of which is a well-earned distrust of the education system.

“We have students who have been to residential school,” he said. “That whole idea of education and how it was used as a different tool than it is now. There’s a trust factor.”

King and her group spent Wednesday at Hart House, one of the most illustrious buildings on U of T’s campus. The tour was part of the university’s SOAR program, which aims to help break down barriers for indigenous students who want to pursue a post-secondary education.

Smoke from Criger’s smudging ceremony drifted around the room, past a wooden throne, a stone lion’s head and other trappings of the school’s – and Canada’s – colonial past.

Hart house first opened in 1919, a year before Indian Affairs deputy superintendent Duncan Campbell Scott made attendance at residential school mandatory for every indigenous child between 7 and 16 years old.

There was a time not so long ago when sacred indigenous ceremonies were banned outright, Criger said. That students can now smudge inside a place like Hart House speaks to how far the school and the country have come, but there is still farther to go.

While there are many other systemic barriers indigenous students must overcome getting to university – like an on-reserve school system that routinely fails them – once they’re here, the environment can feel very intimidating.

“People feel like, will I be lost here?” explains Hamilton-Diabo.

Now in its 25th year, First Nations House is a place where indigenous students can access peer support, network with a community and stay connected to their culture.

Hamilton-Diabo said the students who come in are seeking support for everything from help with childcare to loneliness and isolation.

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“For some of our students, they may be one of the first in their family entering into post-secondary,” Hamilton-Diabo said.

“There’s so many different pressures and they sometimes don’t have family experiences to draw on.”

U of T’s total enrolment is around 87,000. Of those, only about 880 students identify as indigenous, according to the university.

That’s where U of T’s SOAR program comes in. Over March break, the university hosted King and about two dozen other indigenous youth for a week. They toured the campus, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Eaton’s Centre, and got a feel for what university life can be like.

“To know that you can find a community and practice your culture here, that’s really important,” King said.

King and her friend Sagatay Penagin are both from Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek, also called Gull Bay First Nation. It’s a small community north of Thunder Bay where life is both beautiful and challenging, Penagin said.

“It’s good because you’re surrounded by family, but it has its disadvantages as well. We’ve been under a boil water advisory for like 30 years,” she said.

At home, Penagin is surrounded by lakes and immersed in her culture.

She says she could see herself having a career in Toronto when she’s older, but the idea of moving to the big city right now scares her.

“I think it would be too much of a transition for me,” she said. “I’m not sure I’m ready to take that next step yet,” she said.

Unlike Penagin, King is surer of her intentions. Her mother went to university, but didn’t finish. Her grandparents, however, both have masters’ degrees in social work from the University of Toronto. She hopes to keep that tradition alive.

“I’m interested in coming to Toronto for school,” she said. “Doing this program shows me what kind of community I could have.”