[4] Their father deserted the family when they were 10 years old; their mother, Jean, was a loyal member of the Methodist Church and raised them in that tradition.
[4] In 1995, Pattel-Gray graduated with a PhD in Religion from the University of Sydney, with a thesis entitled "The Great White Flood: Racism in Australia; Critically Appraised from an Aboriginal Historico-Theological Viewpoint".
[4] In 1998, she worked alongside him in organising "The March for Freedom Justice and Hope" on 26 January, a protest of over 40,000 people seeking to remind the country in the midst of its bicentennial celebrations that "White Australia had a Black History".
[2] She was the first person to bring the details of the Stolen Generations to a large international forum at the World Council of Churches in Canberra in 1991.
[15] In July 2024, at the Seventeenth Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia, Professor Pattel-Gray was one of three nominees for the role of President-Elect https://uniting.church/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/D2-Profiles-of-President-elect-Nominees.pdf.
[17] She calls the invasion and theft of the land the "original sin" that Australian churches have to deal with if they want to relate meaningfully to Aboriginal peoples.
[18] Reviewer Mark Hutchinson said the book's "point is well taken" and the author's "anger and hurt are undeniable", but that it relied too heavily on the scholarship of others and takes a "confrontationalist" approach.
[19] Her colleague Garry Trompf noted that there is "no aspect of the settler capitalist heritage that has been left untouched by Pattel-Gray's uncomfortable analysis.