This paper documents historical and contemporary evidence of the HPE field's honouring Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing -- and argues that much more needs to be done. Underpinning this is our philosophical belief that honouring Indigenous knowledges ultimately contributes to planetary health. We begin the paper with the positioning of ourselves within the context of this work. Extrapolating this, we introduce our particular contexts, to help convey the complexity of socio-historical and political influences. Following this, we document a series of events in our field of HPE that convey working towards honouring Indigenous knowledges and illustrate examples of Indigenous ways in educational institutions. The final section introduces the other papers of this special issue. The issue captures a moment in time where practices associated with racism, specifically towards First Peoples, at systemic, institutional, embodied and epistemic levels, are being challenged and countered, yet still require further dismantling. We regard the movement towards obligations of not just acknowledging, but also engaging with and for First Peoples, as still not strong enough to claim our field is inclusive or honouring. Such movements signal important opportunities not just for HPE curricula, but also for the pedagogies, topics, partnerships and research for planetary health more widely.