[3] According to government policy of that time local Aboriginal children were to be raised and schooled by the missionaries at Mount Margaret Mission where McLean's son went too.
[1] In 1992 she participated in the Warta Kutju (Wama Wanti) Street Art Project, where she met fibre artist Nalda Searles.
[4] In 1993, she created her famous painting Hunting grounds depicting the ripe quandong fruit, the ripples on the surface of the waterholes, the scampering of the goanna and the laughter and song of her people.
Throughout the 1990s she worked with artist Nalda Searles as part of the Healthway Fringe Camp Project and developed her distinctive painterly style.
[8] In 2005 a book with a catalogue for a retrospective exhibition Pantjiti Mary McLean: A Big Story: Paintings and Drawings 1992–2005 was published in Adelaide.