Justin Bieber has a long and honoured history of saying idiotic things.

Unsurprisingly, his latest contribution to the treasure trove of stupid things has him in hot water: he wrote in the guest book at Anne Frank House that he hoped Frank would have been “a Belieber.” It’s not the kind of thing a person with much self-awareness puts on paper, being able to anticipate the reaction it would bring.

But –

(Oh God. Pause. Breathe. Now go on.)

But though I’m ashamed to find myself in this position, I’ll take up half-hearted arms in defense of Bieber. Not because I think it was a smart thing to say, or because I think he’s not an insufferably self-centered person — all evidence I’ve read on this point typically points to “yes.” It’s just because I think there’s something worth reflecting on in this one, yet.

This is how I see it.

On the Anne Frank House’s Facebook page, one person chided Bieber, calling on him to show some respect for “‘an important historical figure.’” But the thing about Anne Frank is that she wasn’t important, historically. Which is why her story is.

See, we don’t read Anne Frank’s diary because it was written by her, Anne Frank. We read it because we can relate. The diary preserved the thoroughly normal musings of a normal teenage girl, about to be consumed by a savagely abnormal time. She wrote some on what was happening to her, yes. But she also vented about her cool relationship with her mother, she mused on the purpose of life, she was curious about boys and sex and growing up. She had dreams, she played games, she got bored.

Does anyone miss this point?

“The most amazing girl ever!” someone wrote on the Anne Frank House page.

Once again, she wasn’t. Frank was certainly bright, precocious and engaged, but she was not especially different in that way. It’s just that due to circumstance, her diary survived the war, and its publication became a stand-in for the countless girls and young women whose voice was lost in totality. The countless girls and women who, somewhere, wrote similar things, wrestled similar fears, and fell asleep to the same sort of dreams.

For those of us who came after, when the 1940s seemed ancient and oh-so-far-away, Anne Frank’s diary gave us a window to really feel the weight of history. Because she was normal. Because we read our thoughts in hers, and in doing so, heard the voices of millions also so destroyed.

Justin Bieber’s crime is only that he accurately took that message away.

He visited the house, and saw the posters of movie stars Anne Frank pegged on the walls, and looked at her the way he has learned to look at every teenage girl: as a fan, likely, or at least as a potential one, as someone he knows how to charm. He wrote that he hoped she would be a Belieber. He’s surely written this or something like it a million times before, to a million teenage girls.

In this setting it was a dumb thing to do, but oddly just shows that he saw the lesson in her diary true: she was just like every girl any of us have known, or knew. There’s a very good chance she would have loved him, too, and there’s something in that to take away — especially for Bieber’s young fans, who might find in this furor the wartime writings of a girl who they might have called a friend.

And that can only help them start to know, and understand.

If anything out of Idle No More is crystal-clear, it is this: when it comes to First Nations and how they work, a daunting number of Canadians have no freakin’ clue what they’re talking about.

No clue, not one, not even the slightest flicker of a lighthouse of a clue to warn them off the rocks. Instead, they cram into comment sections to dutifully repeat myths they’ve picked up; myths about First Nations and about chiefs, myths that have no basis in reality but make for good outrage. (“Don’t read the comments.”)

There is no excuse for willful ignorance, no excuse for retreating to racist dog-whistles or lazy shorthand about “taxpayers” or welfare or issues even further off the board of Idle No More’s core discussions. There’s no excuse for confusing a government’s own legal obligations with “handouts.” And there is certainly no excuse for taking a movement that tackles complex questions of governance and self-determination, and boiling it down only to a nasty game of “gotcha” on Attawapiskat.

At the same time, I have to ask: how can the majority of the public hope to be informed, when a lot of media coverage of First Nations issues — on governance, on law, on financing — has always been so incredibly bad?

This isn’t to point a finger at reporters, either. Let me be clear: until I started having to do a little bit of reporting on First Nations, the sum total of my knowledge of the Indian Act, of the current legal and governance framework of First Nations in Canada, and of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada  (now AANDC) is best described as “fuck all.”

I doubt I was the only one — and hell, I was always even interested in that stuff.

In fact, I’d be willing to bet that amongst those doing the lion’s share of general assignment reporting, this holds true more often than not. After all, here is a comprehensive list of where I learned about the Indian Act, the current legal and governance framework of First Nations in Canada, and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada in my youth: nowhere. Here is a non-comprehensive list of where I never learned about those things: high school, journalism programs, mainstream media.

My general sense: most Canadians enter adulthood, and begin crystallizing opinions on the country, without having the foggiest clue about how First Nations are run, how they’re funded, why they’re funded, how they are controlled and how the federal government — and one of its most dense and frustrating bureaucracies — plays such an overarching role in the everyday operations of a First Nation.

Look, I’m still far from expert on how it all works. I’m learning where I can, I’ve been learning for years, and the more I learn the more it makes my head hurt. Still, I now have a far better grasp than I did when I actually started having to report on these issues. And it’s enough to know this: the system isn’t just broken, it was never once whole. It’s been a garbage nightmare of colonial bureaucracy from the get-go.

This is all to say this: something has to change, going forward.

With the system, yes, but I mean in our education and ongoing dialogues, too. Looking back on my youth, it’s infuriating to realize how little we were ever taught; for this, there is no excuse. Every Canadian has a responsibility to educate themselves, yes. But it’s no surprise this often doesn’t happen when we are so rarely given the framework to begin to understand, which allows ignorance to trickle out through the media and further widen the gap.

On the bright side: on this end, I think Idle No More is proving to be an incredible success.

It’s gotten people of all stripes talking about treaties, about governance, about the history of it all. It’s gotten non-Native people learning about relationships they mostly never thought about before, and incremental progress is being made. We’re getting smarterer, and a little more educated, and hopefully that will only encourage the knee-jerk responses to slowly fade away.

Time to talk about this stuff like grown-ups, yeah?

——

On a related note, I can’t express enough my admiration for Chelsea Vowel, who has devoted staggering amounts of time to writing and educating people about a lot of the very complex issues around First Nations, the federal government, law, financing, Aboriginal people’s experiences. She was doing phenomenal work before Idle No More began, and has been a remarkable voice in the movement. Her Aboriginal Issues Primer topics are must-reads.

It takes a lot of energy to educate people, especially to try and educate in a sphere where you’re writing about your own life and identity and community, while ignorance reigns supreme. A huge tip of the hat to Vowel and all of the many other women and men who have invested so much time on that end.