am i hearing things?

i'm really angry right now. i can't even make jokes about it i am that infuriated.

this morning i heard a fleeting report on the radio that a mr. gunner (whose name i am apparently prevented from reporting for cultural reasons) has died. or at least i think i heard it. because otherwise i'm going insane.

mr. gunner is an indigenous australian who, along with ms. lorna cubillo, made history when he sued the australian government for compensation over mistreatment in his childhood. gunner and cubillo claimed that the government had breached its duty of care over them and was to be held responsible for the abuse they suffered as children at the hands of those authority figures charged with their care and supervision. both were removed them from their families ("for their own good". ha!) when very young and were placed in group homes for aboriginal children, where they were to be educated and trained. continuously and viscously abused by some of their "carers", mr. gunner and ms. cubillo have since experienced great hardships and mental health problems in their adult years which they claim is a direct result of their traumatic childhoods.

and guess what? they lost the case. the judge found that the government had not breached its duty of care and thus the plaintiffs were not owed monetary compensation as a result.

this is the very crux of the stolen generations. and it's disgusting.

and i for one am SORRY about it. no, i didn't personally forcibly remove children from their families. no, i didn't go out of my way to make sure that they lost all contact with their loved ones, never to see most of them again. no, i didn't personally beat or whip or sexually abuse those same children. and no, i didn't personally steal their hard-earned wages. but i am SORRY nonetheless.

do you hear that, johnny, you useless fucking piece of tin? I'M SORRY! see how easy that was?

so anyway, the reason i'm angry - because the above reasons just aren't enough fuel for my inner fire - is that after i heard about mr. gunner's untimely death on the radio (he is 56), i searched for more information on the internet. i tried google, i tried the abc, i tried the smh, i even tried the waste of cyberspace that is ninemsn. and i found NOTHING. not one little shred of info.

did he not die? did i imagine the whole radio report? was i asleep in my car as i drove to work? or is it just that the death of the pontiff, is all that matters right now and all other lives are rendered insignificant in its wake?

yup, i guess that's it.

if anyone out there knows anything about mr. gunner's passing, please let me know.

back to non-ranty fluff-blogging soon.

update: i'm not hearing things. thanks for this, annie. says a lot for my research skills, huh?