It’s a hot July day and I hit the road from my apartment in Kaimuki across O’ahu for Mahaka valley for a first ever journey into the world of kapa, with Dalani Tanahy.
Dalani is one of Hawaii’s well known artist, practitioner, and teacher of kapa: the Hawaiian bark cloth. Over the hours we sat together and talked story, helping me to understand this art and cultural practice in Oceania. Alike other islands, kapa is not a craft you learn but a life you enter continuing a legacy they once did over generations. It comes from the wauke tree, from the land, from generations of women who pounded bark into cloth for everything from baby blankets to bone wrappings. And it’s still alive today because people like Dalani refuse to let it become only a museum piece.
Kapa in Ancient Hawaiʻi and It’s Place in the Modern Day
The first thing Dalani did was open my understanding through patterns or techniques but most importantly, through use.
In old Hawaiʻi, kapa was everywhere. People wore it as clothing and wrapped their most sacred kiʻi (ceremonial images) in it. They covered altars, wrapped structures, caught newborn babies on it, and wrapped the bones of the deceased for their final journey. I’ll add that it was also a currency of gift and trade.
What struck me was how ordinary and sacred it was at the same time as Kapa wasn’t a special-occasion material. It was woven into daily life from birth to death. Dalani wanted me to start there, not with it’s intricate beauty, but it’s true deeper purpose. Because without understanding how essential kapa was, you’ll never understand why it continued use still is significant today.
One Tree, Many Branches: Hawaiʻi and the Pacific Tapa
As shared in my documentary Living Like A Hawaiian, Dalani traced kapa’s deeper roots. The paper mulberry tree—wauke in Hawaiian, ua in Samoan as explained by American Samoa’s Reggie Meredith. Tapa came with the oldest voyagers, carried from Taiwan and China outward into Oceania. One tree, one technique, carried across thousands of miles of open ocean. (References of Pacific Migration varies and nothing I transcribe here is intended to be concrete)
But here’s what she emphasized: after those voyagers settled in different islands—Hawaiʻi, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa—the practice branched. Each place developed its own methods, its own designs, its own visual language and evolved along the way. They’re related, like cousins at a family reunion, but they’re not the same.
One tree, many branches is something that I can never let go as I continue this voyage around the Pacific in tapa. It’s a beautiful way to understand connection and distinction without flattening anyone’s culture, but honoring them.
How Dalani Came to Kapa (And Kapa Came to Her)
Dalani didn’t inherit kapa through a direct line of grandmother-to-grandchild instruction, her path was more winding. When she first encountered kapa, she was drawn to the artistic side. Then the process itself grabbed her, she started teaching herself and along the way she evolved to teaching the practice.
Credit Above Three Images – Dalani Tanahy
The turning point came when she met a group that had written an entire curriculum to teach children how to make kapa, but they had no teacher. Though Dalani felt she didn’t know enough and was shy about public speaking – she stepped in anyway.
That’s when she learned the difference between learning for yourself and learning so you can teach. The latter, she told me, changes everything. Suddenly kapa wasn’t a private interest. It was kuleana—responsibility. People were looking to her and because so few people knew much about kapa, her teaching carried real weight bigger than just herself.
She didn’t say this with pride, but said so that was balanced or better understood as pono—righteously, carefully, and balance, leaving room for correction. That humility, coming from someone who has taught thousands, was only contributing to the way I voyage other cultural spaces – pono.
Tapa Begins With The Tree, Design Next
One of my favorite parts of our time together was how much Dalani talked about the plant – the paper mulberry tree, the very plant and material that journeyed with the voyagers over thousands of years.
The wauke tree has different leaf forms and the bark’s quality changes depending on where it’s grown—sun, shade, water, soil. Harvesting has to happen at the right time and processing takes patience and attention, let alone the space needed for the trees. She walked me through it all, and I realized: kapa is not something you can learn from a video. You have to be there, be one with the practice, make mistakes, and simply commit.
She also adapts for teaching. When working with children, she sometimes uses polished ʻōpihi shells to introduce stripping the bark. It’s accessible, but it still gives kids a real sense of how their ancestors lived. The balance—between authenticity and practicality, is something she’s thought about for decades.
But she’s clear about one thing alike Reggie and those involved weaving culture across Oceania: she’s not interested in speeding up the process with machines. The slow, embodied way is important because it teaches people something deeper than efficiency. It teaches attention, patience, dedication and connection to the land.
What the Written Records Left Out
Dalani is also very mindful of the course of history then to now. She told me that most of what we know about old kapa comes from documents written at the very moment Hawaiian life was being upended—by plantations, by cattle ranches, by foreign diseases and foreign laws. Those sources are valuable, but they’re not complete.
One thing that especiall stood out: most of those written accounts were written by men. While men carved tools and tended trees, yes. it was the women who who pounded the kapa. The daily, repetitive, and time consuming skillful labor of beating bark into cloth, belonged to women. That changes how we read the archive.
She told me there was once a time when you could walk around parts of Hawaiʻi and hear the rhythmic thud of kapa pounding all day long. Then, one day, silence. A silence, she exclaimed, was very noticeable.
Teaching Kapa, Carrying Kuleana for The Next Generation
Teaching is the heart of what Dalani does. Not just because she runs workshops, but because she sees every class as a chance to give someone a real encounter with kapa, even if that’s their only encounter.
She’s taught children, college students, adults, hula halaus, and other artists in the making. She’s adapted tools, simplified steps, lengthened timelines from her home to galleries and events overseas. She’s even done work in an airport. What matters to her is that the encounter is honest while staying honest within her practice. Even if the turnover rate is high of the coming and going. If each person walks away with even the slightest of understanding, kuleana was fullfilled.
When she realized people would take her words as “a kind of gospel” on a subject they knew little about, she made a commitment to speak with pono. That doesn’t mean pretending to know everything but being sincere, open to new information as well, and careful not to speak lightly about things that matter. And it’s why so many people trust her and I was honored to share that space with her on that alone.
Where Kapa Stands in Hawaiʻi Today
I asked Dalani about the state of kapa today in my words, “if anything is missing.” and her answer surprised me.
She said she has experienced “only good things” with people. Not that the work is easy, but that the reception has been warm. Kapa is in an evolving place. It’s moving through fashion, ceremony, practical use, repatriation projects, and fine art.
What she does hope for is normalization. She doesn’t want people to say “ooh, that’s fascinating” when they see kapa. She wants them to see a kapa scarf, a kapa headband, a kapa bag, and think: that’s just part of life here. The way Hawaiian language is becoming more normal in signage and conversation, she wants kapa to be that familiar.
At the same time, she’s realistic. Growing wauke takes land, effort and patience. Making tools takes skill. Learning takes years. Kapa will never be cheap or fast. But it can be done with the right open mind, passion, and commitment.
One Last Image: The Sound of Pounding
Before I concluded my time with her, I asked what she hopes people remember. Not about her, but about kapa as a whole.
She told me about stories from the old days—the sound of pounding echoing across the ahupuaʻa. Women working together, singing sometimes, beating bark into cloth for their families. That sound was life. And even though it faded for a long time, it is coming back. Not everywhere, not spilling into the day to day, and not all day. But in classrooms, in workshops, in the yards of practitioners like her, you can hear it again.
That’s what she’s carrying forward. Not just an object. A sound, rhythm and a relationship between hands and tree and land.
Watch the Segment on Kapa in Living Like A Hawaiian
If You Visit Hawaiʻi and Want to See Kapa:
Kapa is not a just a souvenir-stand item and an exhibit item, it’s a living cultural practice that is just as important as Hawaiian hula, language, lauhala weaving and more. Your best chance to see it is at cultural centers, museums with Hawaiian collections such as the Bishop Museum, or through workshops led by practitioners like Dalani.
Learn the word wauke and listen, you just might hear the quiet thud of someone keeping an old sound alive. Better yet, pick up a hohoa, and be one with the practice.
Special thank you to Dalani Tanahy for the time, space, knowledge, and opening the door to voyaging the Pacific through tapa, a thread that continues through One Ocean, One People.
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