We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of Country across Australia and the Torres Strait Islands. Indigenous knowledges are and have been used to support us to sustainably exist with Australia’s fragile ecology for thousands of years but are only recently being valued for their role in creating a sustainable future for Australian fauna. Indigenous Ecological Knowledges can play a vital role in the future management, and recovery of Australian native species. But the value of this knowledge needs to be recognised by those in decision-making roles. Here, I present these concepts using my family totem, the Koala, as a case study for how these two knowledge systems can be merged. As part of my Honours research year, I completed reflections that were centred around the experience and challenges that I, as an Indigenous person, would experience when merging Indigenous and Western research methodologies. The key reoccurring findings of my reflections were categorised into 1) my growth as an Indigenous person, 2) gaining a deeper sense of ecology, 3) Indigenous Ecological Knowledge, and 4) incorporating culture into a Western science system. This experience overall showed that it is possible to bring your own cultural experience and way of conducting science into the current dominant scientific practice.