Actor Tasma Walton embroiled in legal stoush over large Aboriginal land claim
Australian actor Tasma Walton, who is married to Rove McManus, has become embroiled in a legal stoush involving a large Aboriginal land claim over parts of Melbourne.
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Actor Tasma Walton has become embroiled in a legal stoush involving a large Aboriginal land claim over parts of Melbourne and Gippsland.
Ms Walton, who is the wife of TV personality Rove McManus, believes she has Indigenous ancestry after taking a DNA test.
She is among several people linked to the Frankston-based Bunurong Land Council who will give evidence in the Federal Court next week over a claim by another Aboriginal group.
The rival Boonwurrung Land and Sea Council is pursuing a land claim involving 13,000 sq/km of territory, but this is being challenged by Bunurong members, including Ms Walton.
The court will decide if Ms Walton and others are descended from Indigenous people who “at sovereignty, held rights and interests in any part of the land and waters” covered by the land claim application stretching from southeast Melbourne to Wilsons Promontory.
Ms Walton has previously said that on her mother’s side “my ancestors were taken from their (Victorian) clan and brought over to Western Australia”.
The Home and Away and Blue Heelers actor, who married McManus in 2009 and has a daughter with him, said her ancestors were “made to become white” to fit into the “colonised world”.
It was reported her DNA test showed she had 93 per cent British and seven per cent “unknown” heritage.
Court documents show that the judge will rule if a woman called Eliza Nowan was a Boonwurrung/Bunurong member “at sovereignty”, and whether Ms Walton is descended from her.
Similar rulings will be made for other Bunurong council members including Gail Dawson and Sonia Murray.
Leading the land claim for the Boonwurrung Land and Sea Council is Carolyn Briggs, who has previously criticised Victoria’s Aboriginal Heritage Council for recognising the Bunurong Land Council as the official representative of the Boonwurrung people.
She has claimed that the Bunurong group is run by people from interstate who have no connection to Boonwurrung land.
In 2022, Ms Briggs slammed environmental body Trust for Nature over its intention to transfer a donated Phillip Island property owned by the family of late satirist John Clarke to the Bunurong council.
“Once again we have been ignored and decisions made for us by non-Indigenous people,” Ms Briggs said at the time.
Trust for Nature chair Gayle Austen said then that the donated land was private property, and as such was not affected by and nor did it affect the Boonwurrung’s land claim.
In May, it was reported that two former Bunurong Land Council executives were accused of a $150,000-plus fraud against the organisation.
Both men denied the allegations.
Bunurong Land Council declined to comment on next week’s Federal Court case.
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