Maui and the Sun

I struggle to appropriately incorporate Maori culture in many Science lessons without it being a tokenistic inclusion, rather than a valuable learning tool.

In order to try and get the students to think about how myths were explanations of physical phenomenon I set homework to compare the myth of how Maui slowed the sun with the Scientific explanation.
I was looking for the idea of how the day gets shorter and shorter, but then longer again, could be linked with Maui's reaching of the sun and then slowing it down. So the story would repeat each year.
Google classroom assignment