Hina-Oio is a goddess of the sea animals in the mythology of Easter Island. She was married to Atua-Metua and represented the mother of all animals of the sea.

Hina Hina may refer to: People and deities * Hina (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name * Hina (chiefess), a name given to several noble ladies who lived in ancient Hawaii * Hina (goddess), the name assigned to ...

is a divine figure common throughout the

Polynesian narrative The Polynesian narrative or Polynesian mythology encompasses the oral traditions of the people of Polynesia (a grouping of Central and South Pacific Ocean island archipelagos in the Polynesian Triangle) together with those of the scattered cu ...

, with prominent variants also found in

Māori mythology Māori mythology and Māori traditions are two major categories into which the remote oral history of New Zealand's Māori may be divided. Māori myths concern fantastic tales relating to the origins of what was the observable world for the pr ...

Samoan mythology Samoan culture tells stories of many different deities. There were deities of the forest, the seas, rain, harvest, villages, and war. There were two types of deities, ''atua'', who had non-human origins, and ''aitu'', who were of human origin. Taga ...

, and

Hawaiian religion Hawaiian religion refers to the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of native Hawaiians, also known as the kapu system. Hawaiian religion is based largely on the tapu religion common in Polynesia and likely originated among the Tahitian ...

. The creation chant of the

Rapa Nui people The Rapa Nui (Rapa Nui: , Spanish: ) are the Polynesian peoples indigenous to Easter Island. The easternmost Polynesian culture, the descendants of the original people of Easter Island make up about 60% of the current Easter Island population and ...

Easter Island Easter Island ( rap, Rapa Nui; es, Isla de Pascua) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its nearl ...

refers to Hina-Oio twice in the following passage: This passage was sung from memory by an old man named Ure-vai-ko to William Thomson, an American on an 1886 Smithsonian expedition to Easter Island. The chant was written in

Rongorongo Rongorongo (Rapa Nui: ) is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) that appears to be writing or proto-writing. Numerous attempts at decipherment have been made, with none being successful. Although some c ...

on tablets, which Ure-vai-ko refused to read for religious reasons. However, under the influence of alcohol, he agreed to recite the stories and chants on the tablets from photographs of them which had been made by Thomson's expedition.

References

Rapa Nui goddesses Animal goddesses {{goddess-stub