Ranginui's significance in Maori tradition runs well beyond the single dramatic scene of his separation from Papa. He is the fixed point at the top of whakapapa, the genealogical recitation through which Maori tradition reckons descent, so that every named god, every ancestor and every living person can in principle be traced back through an unbroken chain of begetting to Rangi and Papa themselves at the very beginning. That genealogical framework is not merely decorative; it is the primary vehicle through which Maori religious knowledge was preserved and transmitted before sustained European contact, recited by trained tohunga, ritual specialists, who held long chants in memory rather than in writing.
After the separation, Rangi's continuing grief for Papa is read directly into the weather: rain and dew are understood as his tears falling toward the wife he can no longer touch, answered each morning by the mist that Papa is said to send rising from her forests in return, so that the ordinary daily cycle of dew and mist becomes a standing testimony to a loss that never fully resolves. Some traditions add that Rangi and Papa's children, out of pity for their parents' continuing sorrow, turned Rangi to face away from Papa, which is why the sky, as commonly understood, no longer looks directly down at the earth.
George Grey's collection, made in direct consultation with Maori chiefs and tohunga in the 1840s and 1850s, remains the source most often cited for the fullest version of this genealogical and emotional framing, and Maori cultural revival since the twentieth century has drawn on the same chant tradition to keep the account current rather than treating it as settled history.