Ralph Goodale, Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians and Lead Federal Minister for the Urban Aboriginal Strategy today helped release a new book on issues affecting Aboriginal people living in urban areas. Edited by Professors David Newhouse (Trent University) and Evelyn Peters (University of Saskatchewan), Not Strangers in These Parts: Urban Aboriginal Peoples, features 16 papers, each analyzing different issues concerning urban Aboriginal people in Canada."This book not only heightens our awareness of urban Aboriginal issues but also helps all of us to have a better understanding of the circumstances facing urban Aboriginal people in Canada today", said Minister Goodale.The book was produced by the Policy Research Initiative (PRI) incollaboration with the Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians Division of the Privy Council Office and the Research and Analysis Directorate of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC). The book is the first volume in a series of thematic publications of proceedings from the Aboriginal Policy Research Conference. Held in Ottawa in November 2002, the conference was co-hosted by INAC and the University of Western Ontario, with the participation of numerous federal departments and Aboriginal organizations."With an increasingly important number of Aboriginal people living, studying, and working in urban areas, there is a particular need for multidisciplinary research into the many issues facing Aboriginal people in urban settings," Jean-Pierre Voyer, Executive Director of the PRI, wrote in the Preface to the book.The Policy Research Initiative has as its core mandate the advancement of research on emerging issues, and the effective transfer of this knowledge to policy-makers. Research topics tend to cut across the mandates of a number of departments, thereby necessitating effective communication and coordination of activities. Issues currently being addressed by the PRI include new approaches to addressing poverty and social exclusion, population aging, social capital as a public policy tool, North American linkages, and sustainable development.The Urban Aboriginal Strategy (UAS) was introduced in 1998 as part of Gathering Strength: Canada's Aboriginal Action Plan to address, in partnership with stakeholders, the serious socio-economic needs of urban Aboriginal people. The Strategy is designed to improve policy development and program coordination at the federal level and with other levels of government. The intent of the UAS is to reduce the level of disparity that urban Aboriginal people currently face.
