HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – The University of Hawaii at Hilo is hosting a conference to revitalize the Hawaiian language.

On Monday and Tuesday, UH Hilo is hosting He Olelo Ola, an event that invites indigenous language specialists from around the world, providing a unique opportunity to observe instruction of Olelo Hawaii from preschool to the PhD level.

Experts will discuss the future of the Hawaiian language along with endangered languages worldwide.

This year’s theme, No Anei Ko Kakou Ola (our identity is from this place, connecting back to the homeland), highlights the link between olelo Hawaii revitalization and similar efforts among Native American and Indigenous communities globally.

Panel discussions will focus on supporting Hawaiian speaking communities and connecting with the Native Hawaiian diaspora.

Discussions will also highlight how UH Hilo prepares students to navigate life in communities where Indigenous languages remain minority languages in their own lands, similar to olelo Hawaii.

Known as the Hilo Field Study, participants will explore UH Hilo’s Hawaiian language college which is home to the nation’s only BA to PhD Olelo Hawaii medium program.

The tour will also include a visit to Nawahiokalaniopuu, the largest Indigenous language medium school in the U.S., where students receive a full preschool-through-12th-grade education entirely in Olelo Hawaii.

UH Hilo linguists said Hawaiian speaking communities in Hilo share many similarities with diaspora communities in large cities where families often have mixed racial and linguistic identities in an increasingly globalized world.

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The loss of many beloved animals, big and small, in the traumatic 2018 Kilauea eruption planted in many residents an urge for knowledge about how to rescue pets and livestock during disasters.

After years of planning, fundraising and coordination, that goal was realized last week with the first-ever Disaster Response Training: Animal Search and Rescue, an instructional cohort from Feb. 25 through March 1 hosted by the Big Island’s Hawaii Animal Kuleana Alliance and nationwide disaster response group Code 3 Associates.

Executive Director Syndi Texeira of Keaau founded HAKA after the eruption. In addition to the recent training sessions, HAKA has acquired special equipment from as far as the United Kingdom vital for rescuing large animals that have fallen into tight spaces, she said, and has raised about $130,000 of the $190,000 fundraising goal through donations since 2021 on top of receiving support from the Kilauea Recovery Grant Program.

Texeira added that the Puna Strong grant fund also helped make the training possible.

“We’ve been working not only with the county’s emergency defense and civil management, we’ve also built bridges between all the smaller rescues on the island,” she said. “It’s in our name, Alliance … we’re all sharing that same pot of funding, and it keeps getting smaller. So, instead of fighting over it, let’s figure out how we can work together and maybe build it out more.”

The 20 volunteers in the cohort, which includes a two-year commitment to animal rescue with HAKA, featured a mix of career animal service responders, firefighters, ranchers and volunteers hoping to bolster their love for animals with skills to save them.

Several participants also had history with disasters like the 2018 eruption, the 2023 Lahaina wildfire, and the January fires that decimated parts of California, including Regina Dodaro Romero Serrano, who used the cohort to reinforce important knowledge about effective preparedness, communication, and how to keep animals and their people calm.

“There’s always lessons to be learned in every natural disaster and emergency event,” said Serrano, who has over 25 years of experience in animal welfare roles, including vet tech, animal control officer, shelter director and emergency responder.

“There’s no denial that the human-animal bond is incredibly instrumental to working through natural disasters … so keeping people and their pets together creates a level of normalcy in a scenario where nothing is the same,” she said.

Calmly moving large animals such as livestock, often with little to no physical contact, was the focus of a training session on Feb. 28 at a Kulaniapia Falls farm.

“Pressure on, pressure off,” said instructor Andy Petrick of approaching cows from behind the shoulder to create forward motion, then backing off as a reward to keep it going. “Don’t crowd them,” Petrick added as volunteers worked in groups of three to move two medium-size black cows around an open pasture, where they learned crowding can spook the cows into stopping.

During times of verbal instruction amongst the humans, the young cows played with two friendly goats in the shared paddock, and the goats would happily munch ti leaves anytime a volunteer offered one. This gentle innocence and adorable play from the happy livestock only fed the animal adoration that drove the rescue efforts being taught.

Texeira said she was happy that a majority of the attendees were kanaka, and that several were quite young, proving Gen Z can carry the totem of animal stewardship into Hawaii’s future. The youngest volunteer of the group was high school senior Yuisa Nakamura, who made animal rescue her senior project and hopes to mobilize others her age using social media.

“I’m making an Instagram account about this to share with my school, because I believe that every school should have mandatory educational events like this so everybody on this island can know what to do,” she said, adding she thinks people as young as 12 or 13 would benefit from the training she received at the HAKA cohort.

She was around that age in 2018 when she took part in the Kilauea response, filling Red Cross pillowcases with supplies for the displaced that she then distributed with her family.

Nakamura’s favorite HAKA training day was the water-crossing exercise at the Kulaniapia Falls pool on Feb. 27, saying the skills she learned — especially to never attempt standing up while crossing swift-moving water to avoid possibly getting a foot caught in uneven submerged terrain, opting instead to float on one’s back — armed her with knowledge that could allow her to save herself and others someday at popular but dangerous spots in Hilo like Boiling Pots above Rainbow Falls.

“If I can, I want to help wherever I can,” Nakamura said. “I’m not going to put myself out there if I don’t have the proper training, but if I do and I have the opportunity, I would for sure go because I’m helping others out. I have everything I need, so now it’s time to share.”

Following a class-like presentation at Fire Station 3 on Haihai St. in Hilo and the cattle instruction on that Friday, the group made a stop at OK Farms, where a tight-knit herd of horses frolicked in a sprawling field of tall grass that overlooks downtown Hilo to the bay.

Some of the calmest horses were plucked from the group to help teach how to quickly secure a loose horse, determine their state of being based on the physical displays of their mouths, eyes, and ears, and fashion an emergency halter suitable for any animal out of a single lead rope.

Volunteers practiced focusing their eyes on the path they want the horse being led to take, because the animals detect imperceivable body-weight shifts from a person lowering one’s eyes, and the “pressure on, pressure off” technique allows a horse in motion to keep its head aligned with its shoulders for continuous forward momentum, Code 3 staff member Garret Leonard said.

He also taught how horses breathe exclusively through their nose to help volunteers avoid accidentally suffocating them during rescues, along with keeping the lead rope off folded in hand to keep it off the ground, and having the halter ready to quickly place on the horse’s head to keep the rescue smooth.

“It’s the people in a community that will repair the community,” Leonard said about the value of a trained community response. “They’re there 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. When a response team comes in, our time there is limited.”

Code 3 Associates has been on the frontlines of disasters across the country since its founding in 1985. One delay in last week’s cohort occurred when Colorado-based instructors Petrick, Leonard and Jim Boller were called to rescue animals in North Carolina from Hurricane Helene in January.

“We will never self-deploy,” Leonard said, echoing advice both Serrano and Texeira live by. “In any disaster response, if a team shows up that have not been asked, they’ll be asked to leave because … if they’re not properly trained, they end up being the ones that we have to try to rescue, in addition to what the work is.”

His final guidance was the importance of having an evacuation plan with human and animal go-bags prepped before any imminent threat, and responding immediately to evacuation orders.

“People will not evacuate their homes without their animals. They will die with their animals,” Leonard said, to which a passing volunteer voiced loud agreement. “The goal is to have a plan that you and your animals have a place to go.”

Email Kyveli Diener at kydiener@hawaii tribune-herald.com.

Starting April 1, Hawaiian Airlines will revoke access to its Plumeria Lounge at Honolulu Airport for members of the global Priority Pass program. This change leaves some travelers scrambling for alternatives, signaling a broader transformation underway at Hawaii’s busiest airport, now driven by Alaska/Hawaiian Airlines.

Why Priority Pass is losing access to Plumeria Lounge.

Priority Pass recently confirmed the change on its website in All caps: “EFFECTIVE 01APR25 THIS LOUNGE WILL NO LONGER BE PART OF THE PROGRAMME. NO ACCESS WILL BE GIVEN ON OR AFTER THIS DATE.”

Until then, Priority Pass members can still enter the Plumeria Lounge between 6:30 a.m. and 10 p.m., space permitting. After that, entry will be limited to Hawaiian Airlines passengers flying internationally in business class or on specific routes to New York and Boston.

While most visitors do not consider the lounge luxurious, it was a valued perk. As one social media user put it, “While it isn’t the greatest lounge, it was nice to have access with an AmEx Platinum card—much better than waiting at the gate.”

Priority Pass is a global airport lounge membership program often bundled with premium travel credit cards. It grants access to over 1,300 airport lounges worldwide. For many travelers, it’s one of the most-used perks of cards like the AmEx Platinum or Chase Sapphire Reserve, offering a quieter space to wait, snack, and recharge before flights.

What Plumeria Lounge offered to Priority Pass members.

The Plumeria Lounge invited Priority Pass members to join Hawaiian Airlines elite fliers for modest self-serve snacks, beer, wine, soft drinks, Wi-Fi, and charging outlets. While its beige decor and limited space weren’t memorable, it provided a welcome escape from the terminal chaos when HNL is busy.

One traveler recalled, “Not a great lounge but way better than Premier Club. I like the local food—had a kalua pork slider on a taro sweetbread roll and also liked the yakisoba noodles.”

Premier Club, unlike the Plumeria Lounge, is for First Class domestic passengers and Pualani Platinum and Gold members. One user said, “I don’t know if I’d even consider the Premier Club a lounge.”

Other than offering a more comfortable place to wait for a flight, we’d agree the lounge falls short by nearly every standard. So much so that we’d say one of the highlights is the private restroom facilities.

Read: Don’t Dare Enter These Hawaii Airline Lounges On Arrival.

Where Priority Pass members can go now.

The IASS Hawaii Lounge in Terminal 2 is now the only Priority Pass option at HNL. Still, its limited hours (7:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.) and basic amenities make it a far cry from Plumeria and a long walk from Terminal 1. For Hawaiian Airlines passengers departing from Terminal 1, it’s very inconveniently located, but for all other airline passengers, it will be much closer.

As one commenter lamented, “T2 lounge is even crappier. Can’t even call that a lounge.”

The move also follows a trend. One commenter pointed out, “Alaska did the same by removing Priority Pass many years ago. I’d assume the same thing is applying here.”

What’s next for Honolulu Airport lounges?

The new Hawaiian and Alaska flagship lounge planned for 2027 promises a much-improved space for top-tier travelers, with five times the space and a new location at the Mauka Concourse entrance. It’s likely to become a showcase for Alaska’s vision for Hawaiian Airlines. However, for the average Hawaii visitor, the gap between now and then may still feel wide.

Expectations are high. Randy A. commented, “Let’s hope this one actually delivers now that Alaska is in charge.” With both airlines operating under a shared strategy but separate brands, many will be watching how they define the future of Hawaii air travel.

As the Alaska-Hawaiian partnership evolves, travelers will be watching to see if these changes truly elevate the airport experience—or simply leave more passengers waiting at the gate.

For now, the end of Priority Pass access at Plumeria marks the first visible ripple in what could be a major transformation at Honolulu Airport. Whether that transformation benefits all travelers remains to be seen.

What’s your reaction to this change?