Not One Goddess but a Family of Them

Hina is a female deity of wide importance across Polynesia, linked with the moon, the tides, and the crafts of women, but her name and forms differ so much between island groups that she is best understood not as a single figure but as a family of related goddesses sharing a name. In Hawaii, Hina is associated with the moon and with the beating of tapa (bark cloth), a women's craft, and she is variously the mother or the companion of the culture-hero Maui; in one well-known account she wearies of earthly life and ascends to the moon, where she can still be seen.

In Tahiti and elsewhere she is bound up with the first woman and with the origin of death. Across these traditions she commonly stands as the archetypal woman, set in complementary relation to a male sky- or sun-figure. Because these are living traditions with their own custodians, the details vary by island and community, and no single version should be taken as the whole.