Maui (Civ6)/Civilopedia

The term "Polynesia" is a loose one, encompassing regions from the Maori Aotearoa (New Zealand) to Hawaii and parts in between. While calling all of this area by one term, "Polynesia," is a vast simplification, there are myths and legends that are shared across the wide expanse, concepts that have made it into English as the words taboo and mana. One of these shared myths is that of Maui.
In Maori myth, Maui does not have the best of beginnings. He is tossed into the sea by his mother, and only survives because the god Ragni nurtures him. When he returns, he is faced with four skeptical brothers, whom he is able to win over by displays of the magic he learned in the depths. He then goes about helping to create the world as we know it. When his brothers refused to give him any fishing bait, he took a magical jawbone and baited it with his own blood to catch the mighty fish that became New Zealand’s North Island. While he was gone to find a priest (a tohunga) to perform the necessary rituals, his brothers came and began carving up the fish, which is why Aotearoa has mountains and valleys, and not a smooth plain, like a fish’s flank. He continues to alter the world: finding fire for humans, creating the first dog, and the like.
His final task was to win immortality for humanity, and to do this he had to crawl through the body of a reclining goddess. He had to do this, the story goes, without anyone laughing at him. If he could pass all the way through, the goddess would die, and mankind would live forever. His friends, a varied flock of birds, tried their best, but they could not help laughing, and so Maui died, and so must we all.
Maui remains an important figure across Polynesia as Polynesian societies re-assert themselves in the wake of colonialism. New respect for local myths and traditions in Aotearoa, Hawaii, Tonga, Tahiti and Samoa, and other places, mean new tellings of Maui’s story, and new interpretations and meanings to his myth.