Stories can be told in many different ways: orally, in writing, through photographs and even on the radio. But they can also be told with thread, and that is Matthew Nicolai’s specialty. He is a storyteller from Kwethluk and can spin a good story with his fingers and a loop of thread.

“I started watching when I was five years old. And my mother and grandfather taught me with a lot of patience,” said Nicolai.

Nicolai said it is a tradition that is not limited to the Yup’ik people.

“I have seen all over the state that this culture is still alive in the more remote areas, away from the core areas. Very few people know about it anymore,” he said.

Airraq is the Yugtun word for stories with strings in the Yup’ik language. If you’ve ever tried to weave a thread weave or Jacob’s ladder with your fingers, you can tell your stories with strings. But it’s also a method of storytelling that has slowly disappeared.

“If I count the whole state, I wouldn’t think there are more than 50 people, so from all cultures, from the Tlingit, Haida, Tsmshian, Athabascan, Inupiaq, Yup’ik, Aleut,” Nicolai explained.

Last fall, Nicolai showed off his Airraq skills during a break between sessions of the Alaska Federation of Natives’ annual convention. Afterward, a crowd found him in the second-floor hallway of the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center in Anchorage. Unalaska teenager Riley Lekanoff sought help to improve her digital skills, saying people in her community aren’t telling stories anymore.

“I knew there was such a thing, but we don’t have it at home anymore. Still, it’s cool to learn it,” Lekanoff said.

Nicolai leaned forward to help Lekanoff bend her fingers just right to make a loop of blue thread into the shape of a human skeleton.

“There’s your ribcage,” Nicolai shouted, while the small crowd that had gathered around him listened loudly. “And then the head comes out of the ribcage. There’s a person. She has it too, the legs, the head, he has a big head like me,” he joked.

Nicolai works hard to keep this form of storytelling alive. The week before AFN, 189 people signed up for an Airraq workshop during the First Alaskans Institute’s annual Elders and Youth Conference.

“This is what my son and I have been promoting,” Nicolai said. “The village elders who know how to tell thread stories should pass these stories on to the younger generation. When they have learned it, they will teach it to the next generation. I know over 60 thread stories, my son knows them all too. We want to continue to teach this to the younger generations,” he said.

Nicolai said the more complicated the story, the less likely it is that anyone else will know how to tell it. “There aren’t many difficult stories. I think there are only five of us in the state,” he said.

Teenager Wassilie Meyers comes from Pilot Station and says that some people there still know Airraq.

“My mother knows a lot about it. She taught me how to make a net,” he said, referring to a fishing net.

Many of the Airraq stories are about hunting and fishing to make a living. Nicolai said they also teach good lessons and morals. “Many of them involve lifestyle stories that you should be wary of. For example, the old woman sleeping on a hill,” he said, winding the string back and forth between his fingers as he told the story. “She went picking berries and fell asleep, and then a bear took her and ran off with her.”

A small figure moved quickly across the woman’s thread as Nicolai untied the loops from some of the fingers and then taught his lesson.

“You know, don’t fall asleep at work. You know, there’s one for the men too. So there’s one for the men too.”

It’s about a musher and his team of dogs, which he quickly sets up by swinging the rope back and forth between his fingers.

“The moral of the story is that you must not fall asleep while dog sledding. If you fall asleep, the dog will run off on its own.”

As he pulled harder and let a few loops of string slip from his right fingers, the little dog ran off to the left, the tug line bouncing up and down behind him.

While it is important to preserve the old stories, Nicolai has also spent time creating new and modern airraqs, including one inspired by a fisherman on the Kenai Peninsula. He wove a fisherman with a fishing rod on one side, and then suddenly a large loop of string formed a fish before it disappeared and the story ended.

“After I saw that, I had to come up with something completely new,” laughed Nicolai. “The fisherman from Kenai caught a king salmon, he fights it, and off he goes. All fishermen are tall tale tellers,” he said, laughing.

Entertaining the audience and telling the story successfully never seems to bore Nicolai.

“Yes! I am still fascinated by how our cultures used to live with it and pass the tradition on from family to family,” he said.

There is also another new and modern version of Airraq. It is the chosen name for the new broadband Internet network of the communications provider GCI The project is designed to serve 10 communities and cover 405 miles through the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Whether it’s a modern network of cables and wires or a simple loop of string, Airraq is about connections 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 by the CIRI Foundation’s Journey to What Matters fellowship program.