Stories can be told in many different ways: through oral histories, in writing, through photos, and even on the radio. But they can also be told with string, and that’s what Matthew Nicolai does best. He’s a storyteller from Kwethluk, and he can spin a good yarn with his fingers and a loop of string.
“I started watching at age five. And my mom, my grandpa, they were very patient at teaching me,” Nicolai said.
Nicolai said that it’s a tradition that’s not only limited to the Yup’ik people.
“It’s all over the state that I’ve seen, where the more outer, away from the hub areas, that culture is still alive. Very few people still know these,” he said.
Airraq is the Yugtun word to describe stories with string in the Yup’ik language. If you’ve ever tried to use your fingers to weave a cat’s cradle or a Jacob’s ladder, your stories can be told with string. But it’s also a method of storytelling that has slowly disappeared.
“If I count across the state, I wouldn’t think there’s more than 50 people, meaning from all cultures, from Tlingit, Haida, Tsmshian, Athabascan, Iñupiaq, Yup’ik, Aleuts,” Nicolai explained.
Last fall, Nicolai showed off his airraq skills during a break between sessions at the annual Alaska Federation of Natives convention. Afterward, a crowd found him on the second floor hallway of Anchorage’s Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center. Unalaska teenager Riley Lekanoff sought some help to sharpen her digital dexterity. She said that in her community people don’t tell string stories anymore.
“I knew that it was a thing, but, like, we don’t have this at home anymore. It’s cool to learn though,” Lekanoff said.
Nicolai leaned in close to help Lekanoff bend her fingers in just the right way to twist a loop of blue string into the form of a human skeleton.
“There’s your rib cage,” Nicolai exclaimed as a small crowd that had gathered around oohed and aahhed. “So then out of the rib cage comes the head. There’s a human being. She got it too, so the legs, head, it’s got a big head like me,” he joked.
Nicolai is working hard to keep this storytelling form alive. In the week leading up to AFN, 189 people signed up for an airraq workshop during the annual First Alaskans Institute Elders and Youth Conference.
“That’s what my son and I have been encouraging,” Nicolai said. “The village Elders that know how to do string stories, to carry on that story, the stories to the younger generation. When they learn, they’re gonna teach the next generation. I know 60 plus string stories, my son knows them all too. We like to keep teaching this to younger generations.” he said.
Nicolai said that the more intricate the story, the less likely it is that someone still knows how to tell it. “The ones that are the hard ones, there’s not many. I think there’s only five of us in the state,” he said.
Teenager Wassilie Meyers is from Pilot Station, where he said that some people still know airraq.
“My mom, she knows some, some about this. She taught me the net, how to do the net,” he said, referring to a fishing net.
Many of the airraq stories are about subsistence hunting and fishing. Nicolai said that they also provide good lessons and morals. “A lot of them had stories behind them about lifestyle that you should be alert. As an example, when you do the old woman sleeping on top of a hill,” he said, looping the string back and forth between his fingers as he talked. “You know, she went berry picking and fell asleep, and a bear took her and ran off with her.”
A little figure moved quickly off across the woman’s string as Nicolai slipped the loops from a few fingers and then offered the lesson.
“You know, don’t fall asleep on your job. You know, there’s also one for the men. So there’s one, also, for the men.”
That one is about a musher and his dog team, which he sets up quickly, weaving the string back and forth between his fingers.
“The moral of the story is when you are dog mushing, you are not supposed to fall asleep. If you fall asleep, the dog runs off on its own.”
As he pulled tighter and slipped a few loops of string from his right fingers, the little dog ran off toward the left, tug line bouncing behind him.
While the old stories are important to preserve, Nicolai said that he’s also spent some time creating new and modern airraq, including one inspired by a fisherman on the Kenai Peninsula. He wove a fisherman with a pole on one side, and then all of a sudden a big loop of string formed a fish before it disappeared and the story was over.
“I had to come up with something that was brand new after seeing this, laughed Nicolai. “The fisherman from Kenai caught a king, he’s fighting it, and here it goes. All the fishermen are tall-tale tellers,” he said with a laugh.
Entertaining the crowd and successfully telling the story never seems to get old for Nicolai.
“Yes! I still am intrigued how our past cultures of the past lived with these and carried the tradition on, and on, and on, from family to family,” he said.
There’s also another new and modern iteration of airraq. It’s the chosen name for communications provider GCI’s new broadband internet network that aims to serve 10 communities and cover 405 miles across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Whether it’s a modern network of cables and wire, or a simple loop of string, airraq is about connection and the stories that bind people together. It’s a long-standing Yup’ik tradition that Nicolai is keeping alive.
This reporting was made possible through the CIRI Foundation’s Journey to What Matters grant program.
