Dickie Minyintiri is one of the most senior Anangu Pitjantjatjara alive today, and is therefore one of the most significant and important artists from this region. He was born at Pilpirinyi, Western Australia, near the border with South Australia in about 1915. He is a highly respected ngangkari (traditional healer) and senior Law Man, and still carries that knowledge while having retired from practising. He is the oldest man in Ernabella, and is both loved and revered by the whole community. Dickie remembers his early life as a child travelling with his parents across the country that is now known as Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, making him one of the small number of Indigenous Australians still living who followed a traditional hunter gatherer life. His family first came to Ernabella before the Mission days, and Dickie is able to point out landmarks such as rocky outcrops, waterholes and caves where his family camped then.

He also remembers the first European coming to Ernabella, the first building and the entire establishment of the Ernabella Mission. He remembers the shock of seeing the first sheep and goats, which were to become a big part of his life as he spent many years working hard as a shearer and a shepherd.

Dickie began painting at Ernabella Arts in late 2005. His work has a strong, raw edge that tells the story of his life in pre-contact times, his position in ceremony, and how it is used to protect the ancestral beings of his country; namely the rock wallaby, kangaroo, euro, stone curlew and emu.

When Dickie paints he sings inma to himself as he remembers the places he has been. He remembers his decades of walking his country. He remembers his childhood, growing up in the bush, seeing a white person for the first time, and later working for white men, herding sheep and cattle. He recalls later still working as a policeman. When Dickie paints Tjukurpa, he is painting law. When Dickie paints inma, he is putting down the steps of the dance, the songs that are sung, the places the men stand, the animals involved. When Dickie paints Country, he is mapping where things are – waterholes, tracks, secret places and the best places to find food. Lines overlap each other in these complex, multi-layered compositions. Each layer and line is a memory of a journey. Country, Creation Beings, Tjukurpa, inma and increase ceremony are put down again and again, coming together in one final incredible painting. Dickie finishes nearly every work with a final layer under which all secret law is hidden.

Dickie won the 28th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2011, the highest prize for an Aboriginal painter.