Dickie Minyintiri circa 1915-2014

Dickie Minyintiri was born in the bush at Pilpirinya in the Pitjantjatjara heartlands around the tri-state border region of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia in the centre of the continent. His birth – on the desert sand in a wiltja, a shelter of mulga boughs thatched with spinifex – predated written records and was estimated to have been around 1915–1920. Minyintiri became one of the oldest artists at Ernabella when, in 2005, he took up a paintbrush for the first time. No longer able to stride his Country, he could still travel there by singing the Inma – song cycles of the Tjukurpa – the Law and Dreaming – of his Country. Minyintiri’s paintings of the Wiilu Inma – the song and dance of the bush stone-curlew – held special significance for him, as he was a Traditional Owner and custodian of the Wiilu sacred site near his homeland of Puta Puta. He painted the men’s night dance of this rare nocturnal bird with its distinctive loud, wailing cry that signalled the presence of water in the claypans and rockholes.

Tjukurpa, ‘the Dreaming’, is the Aṉangu ground of all being, it is the sustaining life force of creation and the continuous being of all things. In the beginning time, these powerful animal–human beings created the Country, transmogrifying into rocks, hills, valleys, waterholes and trees, and leaving edible foods and water sources for their descendants. As a senior lawman, Dickie Minyintiri had authority to paint the Tjukurpa and Inma songlines of his Country.

Poised before a blank canvas, Dickie Minyintiri would pour his song into the paint – envisioning the men dancing ceremony on Country. Despite his deteriorating eyesight, his inner vision was clear as he confidently layered broad brushstrokes of paint, or used puṉu – a stick to apply special marks. A puṉu stick or the hand is the traditional way coloured ochre designs are painted onto the bodies of men and women prior to dancing Inma. Using both techniques on his large canvas Kanyalakutjina (Euro–hill kangaroo tracks) that won the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) 2011, Minyintiri painted the sound of men’s Inma, the clapsticks and stamping dance reverberating powerfully.

–Dr Diana James in Clever Men: Harry Tjutjuna, Dickie Minyintiri and Tiger Palpatja, D'Lan Contemporary, Melbourne, p. 22-24.