Born in San Diego, California, and living in Makaha, Oahu, Hawaii for over thirty-eight years, Dalani Tanahy is a practitioner, artist, and teacher of the traditional art of Hawaiian kapa, or bark-cloth making. One of a small group of people who have devoted themselves to the rescue and rehabilitation of an art once considered lost, she has spent thirty years immersed in the kapa arts. It became evident early on that kapa required attention to many arts to bring it back to life, including the cultivation of source plants for fiber and dyes and the gathering and crafting of traditional tools. With no living resources of Hawaiian heritage to teach ancient techniques, practitioners, including Tanahy, were left to study museum collections and writings and learn from kapa makers of other Pacific Islands.

Tanahy has been prolifically creative since childhood, especially in illustration, fiber arts, and crafting. In Hawaii, she was able to learn traditional practices like fighting arts, medicinal plants, outrigger canoe racing, surfing, hula, and temple restoration among others. Somehow, teachings from all these arts coalesced in kapa-making. During her career thus far, Dalani has created gifts of kapa for the Dalai Lama during his 2015 visit to Hawaii and for the Commander of the Pacific Submarine Fleet during his change of command in 2013. Kapa is created for stage and performance art, local and global exhibitions and projects, and traditional use such as reburials of human remains being returned from museum collections.