This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Polynesian Sky gathers three figures built for wayfinding across open ocean, large shapes readable even when cloud covers part of the sky, rather than the small isolated patterns land based traditions could afford.
Te Waka o Rangi is a canoe drawn across a very large stretch of the Maori sky, its prow at the Scorpius end and its stern at Orion, where the figure the Greek list calls Orion's belt is read as the stern rather than a belt. The canoe is crewed and carries the year: as it turns it hauls the Pleiades into view, the event that opens the new year. Manaiakalani is the fishhook of Maui, formed from the curve of stars the Greek list calls the tail of Scorpius; in the Hawaiian account Maui uses it to pull the islands up out of the sea before it is set in the sky, and the same hook appears across Polynesia under related names as both story and navigational bearing.
Matariki is the Pleiades in Maori reckoning, its first rising before dawn in midwinter marking the new year, an occasion for remembering the dead, releasing them to the sky, and setting intentions for the year ahead. Observance declined under colonisation and has been deliberately revived since the 1990s; Aotearoa New Zealand made Matariki a public holiday in 2022, the first in the country tied to an indigenous observance, its date set by astronomical reckoning rather than fixed on the calendar.