Demigod son of the sky-goddess Whaitiri by the mortal Kaitangata. Father of Tāwhaki and Karihi by Urutonga. Captured and blinded by the Ponaturi (Maori malevolent water-spirits) while searching for a gift for his newborn son; died in captivity per the dominant Maori Grey 1855 recension. Avenged by his sons Tāwhaki and Karihi who destroyed the Ponaturi by trapping them in their hut and exposing them to sunrise — the canonical-Polynesian Ponaturi-sunrise-destruction scene. The Cook-Islands and Tahitian recensions have Tāwhaki rescuing his father alive; the Hawaiian recension (Fornander 1878) has Tāwhaki himself killed in the rescue-attempt and the eventual vengeance falling to Rata, his grandson. The blinding-and-imprisonment of Hemā is the canonical-Polynesian wrong-suffered-by-the-father narrative-event that motivates the entire Tāwhaki-Wahieroa-Rata vengeance-cycle.