Barbara Weir
Barbara Weir is an Australian Aboriginal artist and politician. One of the Stolen Generations, she was removed from her aboriginal family and raised in a series of foster homes. After becoming reunited with her mother in the 1960s and divorced in 1977, Weir eventually returned to her family territory of Utopia, 300 kilometres northeast of Alice Springs. She became active in the local land rights movement of the 1970s and was elected the first woman president of the Indigenous Urapunta Council in 1985. She did not begin painting until 1989 at about age 45, but she became recognised as a notable artist of Central Australia. Her work has been exhibited and collected by major institutions. She also has managed her mothers career since Minnie Pwerle began painting in 2000, her work has become popular.
Barbara Weir was born about 1945 at Bundey River Station, a cattle station in the Utopia region of the Northern Territory. Her parents were Minnie Pwerle, an Aboriginal woman, and Jack Weir, a married Irish man described by one source as a pastoral station owner, by a second as an Irish Australian man who owned a cattle run called Bundy River Station, but by another as an Irish stockman. Under the antimiscegenation racial laws of the time, their relationship was illegal, and the two were jailed. Weir died not long after his release. Pwerle named their daughter Barbara Weir.
Source: Wikipedia