The meeting house, or wharenui, that spent 70 years at the Otago Museum in Dunedin as an exhibit has been restored to its former glory, and is now a ''living building'' used by its Ngati Awa community.
The building thousands of Dunedin school children and museum visitors will remember in its term at the museum from 1926 to 1996 is now used both to unify the 22 hapu of the Ngati Awa people, as an events and conference facility and a tourism venture in Whakatane.
At the Trenz tourism conference in Rotorua, Mataatua Maori marae experience manager Hinauri Mead said the building had changed a lot since its time in Otago, and Dunedin people who visited had wondered if it was the same structure.
But Ms Mead said parts of carvings on the wharenui had been removed and the roof lowered to allow it to fit into the museum.
''Over time, there was a lot of damage.''
Those changes had been reversed.
The wharenui was opened in 1875, and dedicated to Queen Victoria.
Ms Mead said the building was constructed as a gift for the Queen, though it was not intended for it to be removed, rather as a place for her to call home in New Zealand.
It was removed by the government of the day, when ''the climate of the times was different to what it is today''. In 1880, the wharenui was sent to international exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne.
In 1881 it was sent to London to be shown outside a museum, was dismantled and stored until being put back together for the 1924 British Empire exhibition, then sent to the South Seas exhibition in Dunedin in 1925.
It was set up at the Otago Museum in 1926, where it stayed until its return in 1996, through a Waitangi Tribunal special deed of settlement.
The building was reopened in 2011.
In Whakatane it was a symbol of unity, and used for meetings, workshops and weddings, as well as part of a tourism operation, Ms Mead said.
That was not a show or a performance, but ''an engagement'' with visitors that allowed them to learn about Ngati Awa.
''The story of it coming home really touches people's hearts. The story of the wharenui is really the core of what we do.''
