Te Puia Maori Center
We visited the Te Puia Maori center. The guide is wearing the typical Maori jade and bone pendants and earrings sold in tourist shops.
I must admit that we did not take any extra steps to understand more of the Maori culture. But what we have seen (perhaps superficially) was disappointing. I feel like there is not much depth there. All the Maori performances were effectively the same Kiwi Haka, virtually the same storyline.
I was planning to buy a Maori jade piece. Lots of the showrooms we went to have a dusty jade workshop completed with machinery, drawing board, etc... connect to the showroom. But in ALL of these visits, the workshops were empty, and we were told that the craftmen were off for the day. Probably the workshops were just part of the showroom decoration and pretence. In one of the showrooms, the "workshop" was just too artsy to be real.
Anyway, I did not buy any, because the one that I like best with a reasonable price was in Arrowtown in the South Island.