Manaiakalani is Maui's fishhook, and unlike most sky figures anywhere it looks like what it is called. The tail of Scorpius curves and then hooks back, and the barb is at the end. No interpretive effort is required.
The account is the most widely told story in Polynesia with local variants everywhere. Maui goes fishing with his brothers, using a hook made from a jawbone and baited in a way the versions disagree about, and hauls up land from the seabed. In Aotearoa the North Island is the fish, Te Ika-a-Maui, and the South Island is the canoe he stood in. In Hawaii and Tonga and elsewhere the islands raised are the local ones. The hook goes into the sky afterwards.
As a navigational object it is excellent. It is bright, it is unmistakable, it lies well south, and its position through the night and the year gives both a bearing and a season. The star at the barb, Shaula, and the one beside it are close together and low, which makes them a good horizon reference.
Scorpius is one of the few constellations that the Greek tradition also drew as something the stars actually resemble. A scorpion with a curled tail and a hook is not far from a fishhook, and both readings are working from the same real curve.