“When justice and faith collide, truth becomes the deadliest weapon.”

During Earth Day’s largest climate protest at the Lincoln Memorial, Cherokee shaman Wohali Lightfoot is assassinated—alongside his white stallion—in a chilling act of eco-terrorism.

FBI agents John Green and Phoenix Schultz are drawn into a deepening climate conspiracy. While Schultz uncovers a federal security breach in Washington D.C., Green is sent to Oklahoma, guided by a Native American professor. There, he uncovers ties between the murder and the harrowing legacy of the Stolen Generations—Indigenous children forcibly removed from their families across the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

As the agents close in on the truth, they face a growing network of ideological extremists, and an elusive figure known as the “Corleone Christ.” Faith, trauma, and justice collide in a race to expose a conspiracy that could bring down the very institutions sworn to protect the people.

For readers of Indigenous thrillers, climate crime fiction, Christian suspense, and political conspiracy novels.

 

Personal Journey

Along the journey of my writing ‘The Corleone Christ’, people have asked, ‘Why this book?’; ‘Is this really your story to tell’? Both very good questions.

The answer is that this subject seemed to choose me back in 2008.

As a veteran news junky, I heard two stories quite close together involving two Prime Ministers one in Canada and the other in Australia leading apologies to their parliaments for State sponsored, mandatory removal of First Nation children from their parents, their land and their cultures. Some estimate that Canada and Australia together, compulsorily removed 250,000 children from their parents. NDLA: Canada and Australia: Taking Children from Their Homes. Helle Linne Eriksen: last revised 04/19/2022

At that stage in 2008 I was far too busy, both at work and home to attempt any detailed research; I was certainly in no position to begin concentrating on learning to write a work of crime fiction.

However, the truth is I have always remained personally haunted by a growing body of evidence that four major Nations, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the USA, have all been investigated and reported to have enacted a final attempt to eradicate First Nation peoples and their cultures, through the mandatory theft of children from their homes and parents. The aims of these National policies were the assimilation of children and a fundamental break in First Nation connection to the land, land their ancestors had discovered and owned, like all humanity had done, many thousands of years before.

The story, however, never left me. From the view point of my own professional background in the care of children, I had so often looked after children psychologically broken with no secure family; in addition a long term career in adult mental health services taught me that abuse in childhood often leads to mental ill health and addiction. For me then, the very idea that these Nations State funded policies been had purposefully involved in destroying indigenous children's relationships to their families and their cultures, was intolerable.

Eventually, independent investigations and reports were published, bringing these policies and events into the public light. The history of the 'Stolen Generations' dated back to the 1800’s; all the reports describe the enactment of manadtory, State funded policies, working hand in glove with non-State Faith (Christian) based Boarding Schools and other pathways, practically delivering the gross abuses and assimilation of small children. Some reports have clearly described these National, Governmental policies as cultural genocides. 

In 2021 a second apology was made by Canadian Prime Minister,Trudeaux, highlighting that the remains of children's bodies had been found in the grounds of Catholic run Boarding Schools. The remains of children's bodies have also been located in marked and unmarked graves in Australia, the USA and New Zealand. Many of these children were aged fives years and under, most buried without spiritual or religious ceremony; neither were they reported to the Public Record. A fact that speaks loudly about how a European, so called, Christian culture of supremacy, domination and subjugation, truly saw First Nation peoples as subhuman pagans.

The last independent investigation and report to be published was made under a Royal Commission, arrived in July 2024. This one shows again, how very similar New Zealand governmental policies of State funded and non-State Faith (Christian) based practices were enacted in a very similar pattern to Australia, Canada and the USA, with very similar devastating outcomes of abuse, torture and children's remains located in unmarked graves.

Since then, the world has heard from President Biden, in October 2024, making an apology for over a hundred years of exactly the same blend of Federal State funded policies and non State based services. Hundreds of thousands more First Nation children, were stolen over 150 years of U.S. policy, can therefore be added to the Canadian/Australian/New Zealand tally. The USA Federal Government has finally investigated and recorded a report which formed many of the facts President Biden described from the USA’s dark history, which, again, were similar to it's ex-colonial peers. 

There seems very little doubt that these governmental policies have been inspired by the evil Catholic Doctrine of Discovery. Five hundred years of a fake and corrupted Christian theology infected European culture, providing fake theological values of the 'civilised', feeling empowered in exercising dominating and subjugating powers over people the Doctrine describes, as 'heathens, pagans and enemies if Christ'. The Doctrine also formed the basis of the U.S.A legal justification for colonialism, defining that the invading Europeans could 'own' 'promised' land, subjugating First Nation peoples who could only 'occupy' land they had owned for thousands of years; all this was achieved in the name of the Christian God through means His Son would never have approved.

For those U.S. Republican politicians who believe that there is a hidden 'Deep State' involved in preventing America from being made great again, they should perhaps, look to the evidence in the the above U.S. Federal Government Report, which describes a far darker, 'Deeper Federal State', operating a continuous, hidden, Governmental Policy for well over a century of the theft of small children from their Nations, their homes and their parents. This dark 'Deep State' Federal Policy, continuing for well over a century, went unchallenged by Democratic or Republican Administrations alike, seemingly passing silently through all the cycles of public elections without political recognition or corrective action.

The laws regarding land ownership, first established in the USA, were also deployed as a legal president by New Zealand, Australia and Canada, in defining who could and could not own 'their' land ‘The Impact of the American Doctrine of Discovery on Native Lands in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.' (2011) Blake A Watson. University of Dayton, Law Faculty Publications Schoolof Law. 2011

This corruption of Christian theology, has infused generations of European people across the world, who believed they possessed God's approval, for invasion, warfare and casting First Nation people perpetual slavery. This corruption, was 'repudiated' by the Vatican and Pope Francis in March 2023, as a man made ideology; the Catholic Doctrine of Discovery was never the Word of God. 

'The Vatican issued a statement rejecting a series of declarations by the Popes in the 15th Century that formed a legal and political justification for colonization …'

Source: Underscore Native News

https://search.app/NEqiMSXBSSFeEPVP9

In undertaking this work I wanted to ensure that the one Nation which has a very long-term strategic relationship to the other four nations, the United Kingdom, is seen as part of the narrative. The U.K. has a long term relationship of governance and leadership of Australia, New Zealand and Canada through their structures of Constitutional Monarchy; this structure of governance is one through which the British Crown continues to own different proportions of these lands, and the British Crown still acts today as Head of State for Canada, New Zealand and Australia; Queen Elizabeth 11 from 1952 to her death in 2022 was their Head of State; this mantle of Head of State was then immediately passed to King Charles 111.

Finally, the U.K., the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia form the oldest Strategic Alliance in modern times, calling themselves, the 'Five Eyes'. All of these factors demonstrate an extremely close, long term set of strategic relationships in which all five Nations have travelled along the tragic time line of the First Nation peoples, and their 'Stolen Generations' of small children; they have been together in this alliance  since 1946. Surely, these five sets of 'Eyes' must have known all about, and 'seen' and known the truth, of over 60 years of their collective dark policies and practices in all four ex-colonial Nations; during this time they were all practicing the compulsory removal of hundreds of thousands of First Nation children from their parents and their homes! Surely, the U.K. would have been ideally placed to observe their strategic partners and their National policies through this set of relationships and, particularly through their leadership role within the three Constitutional Monarchies themselves.

So, given all of the above, my plan is to write a trilogy; it begins in the USA where the State constructed and put in place, the first legal / Christian, theological justification for colonialism, (Johnson v Mcintosh: 1823), often referred to in the literature as the 'American Doctrine of Discovery'. Currently, these laws remain in place today, two years after the Vatican and the Pope have repudiated the use of the Catholic Doctrine to justify colonialism, and in justifying the denial of First Nation peoples human rights.

The second will give some focus to South America, but will be mainly based in the U.K. 

The third will give a focus to Australasia.

In my mind the tensions between the narratives and themes below will link together to explore: 

The growing crisis in Climate Change / Net 0% worldwide policy and a growing strand of reactionary climate terrorism, seeing the continued colonial attempts to destroy the biosphere.

The fact that 80% of the planet's biosphere is currently protected by First Nation people through their traditional knowledge and understanding about the health of our planet, is a powerful paradox, particularly in the context of the continued fake theological justification of colonialism.

The National constitutional laws, based on the evil, Catholic Doctrine of Discovery will remain a theme of challenge. In a modern world where Pope Francis and the Vatican have clearly repudiated the Doctrine as having no theological basis in justifying such colonial, constitutional controls, must surely give rise to a basis for a renegotiation of legal powers falsely asserted since 1823. Constitutional reforms across all four Nations, involving all First Nation peoples, should now consider how power must be equally held, governed and distributed, delivering a fundamental change of equality in the ownership and governance of land brought about by dismantling all the subjugating powers misapplied from the Catholic Doctrine of Discovery.

Throughout, I want to continue to ask whether our species will ever evolve and understand the need to stop the fighting and killing of one another, and other species; rather to finally unite to protect and sustain our magical planet as a fundamental principle our human existence and behaviour.