Puanani Van Dorpe

Van Dorpe died in 2014 in Kailua-Kona. Remembrances credited her with reviving kapa in Hawaii in the 1970s, inspiring generations of new kapa makers.

A larger than life-size statue located within the Hilton Hawaiian Village hotel was created in 2006 featuring Van Dorpe as the centerpiece. The sculpture depicts Van Dorpe making kapa, being watched over by the patron goddesses of kapa makers, Lauhuki and La'ahana.

She had a solo exhibit in 1999 at the East-West Center Gallery of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa which was dedicated to demonstrating the methods Van Dorpe recovered for making kapa. Her work is exhibited at the King Kamehameha Golf Course Clubhouse in Waikapu, where eleven panels of kapa honor historic Maui chiefs. Van Dorpe's artwork "Kihei Kapa," created in 2000 to honor the ancient Hawaiian god of agriculture Lono, is located within the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

In 1991, she was named one of the Living Treasures of Hawaii by the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii, recognizing her efforts in preserving Hawaii's cultural and artistic heritage.

In the late 1980s, construction of a oceanside resort in Honokahua resulted in the excavation of more than 900 ancestral native Hawaiian burials. After protests, the bodies were reinterred, with Van Dorpe leading fourteen women for four months to make over 1,000 pieces of kapa to wrap each set of bones for a respectful reburial. She was also responsible for making kapa for the reinternment of one of the relics of Father Damien in Molokaʻi.

As a young adult, Van Dorpe worked as a hula dancer in Waikiki. In the early 1970s, her husband Robert was recruited to work on a cultural center in Fiji. Van Dorpe played golf every day while her husband worked on the center and was the first Hawaiian to play in the Fiji Open. She and her daughter Kapuailohia were invited to visit the Fijian island Vatulele; Van Dorpe was transfixed by the sight of the women of the island creating masi cloth using traditional methods, infusing their work with a deep sense of spirituality. After her ten days on Vatulele, she came away with an intense desire to learn more.

Greta Mae "Puanani" Kanemura Van Dorpe (1933–2014) was an American artist and master of kapa, the Hawaiian art of making cloth from bark fibers. Van Dorpe spent more than forty years researching the forgotten craft of making kapa, investigating the tools and materials used by ancient Hawaiians and experimenting to replicate the cloth. She has been credited as one of the women responsible for reviving the art of kapa in the 1970s.

Greta Mae Kanemura was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1933. Her ethnic background was one-eighth native Hawaiian.