Muri-ranga-whenua was Māui's kuia (elder woman), his ancestress. She was so old that half of her had already passed out of the world. Her people sent food to her each day, and each day it was carried to where she sat waiting.
Māui began to take that food himself. Day after day he intercepted it, and his ancestress went without. Eventually he decided to go to her in person. When he came near, she sniffed the air. She smelled a stranger and her body began to swell, ready to devour whoever was coming.
Then she sniffed again, this time toward the direction he had come from, and recognised the scent of her own blood. This was not a stranger. This was her mokopuna. Her body went down to its normal size, and she asked whether he was the one who had been taking her food. He said that he was.
Māui asked her for her jawbone. She gave it to him. In many tellings it was given willingly, as an elder gives what will outlast her. In others he had to take something from her. Either way, the bone became his.
Everything Māui is most remembered for came from that gift. He used it to beat Tama-nui-te-rā and slow the sun. He shaped it into the hook that fished up Te Ika-a-Māui, the North Island. Without Muri-ranga-whenua there would be none of the feats people tell of him.
She is rarely the centre of the kōrero, but she makes the rest of it possible. Tellings differ between iwi, hapū and whānau, yet the bone and the gift are in nearly all of them.
Hei whakaaro (reflect / thought): think of what you carry that an elder handed down to you. What are you doing with it?
Hei whakaaro · something to sit with
Nā te kauae o tōna kuia i taea ai e Māui ōna mahi katoa.
Everything Māui did began with what an elder gave him.
What have you been handed down, and what are you doing with it?