In mid-1981 an outstation (homeland) was established there and developed as a resource centre for camps elsewhere in the region, allowing the reoccupation of at least some of the Pintupi country.

[9] The community was founded in 1981, when many Pintupi people who lived in the community of Papunya (about 240 km (150 mi) from Alice Springs) became unhappy with their circumstances in what they saw as foreign country, and decided to move back to their own country, from which they had been forcibly removed decades earlier due to weapons testing from Woomera in South Australia, as part of the outstation movement.

[10] The community has a Northern Territory Government-funded primary school, an independent store trading as Puli Kutjarra (meaning Two Rocks/mountains in Pintupi language), an airstrip, an independent health clinic called Pintupi Homelands Health Service, a women's centre called Ngintaka Women's Centre, haemodialysis at The Purple House run by Western Desert Dialysis,[11] a high school run by Yirara College,[12] The local Australian rules football team is the Kintore Hawks.

A number of members of the famous Aboriginal art company Papunya Tula] live at Kintore, among them the deceased artist Ningura Napurrula.

[16] British novelist and travel writer Bruce Chatwin stayed in Kintore for a two week period, starting 18 March 1984, while researching his book The Songlines.