@TitanAnteus The crux of it is that he doesn't want it to seem like a privately motivated question, but honestly fails on every level of that. If he wants to feel like he's not done anything unethical according to his own values and morals then what matters is context, context, context. Him asking it alone, privately, and out of the blue pretty much (as shown) implies that this is a matter of private interest as opposed to an social or governmental interest. Had he brought along one or more of the government workers or species representatives, asked in a public situation such as when they were arriving or at a council meeting of representatives, or asked in response to an interspecies relationship involving one of the groups developing then it would have been far more appropriate and not seemingly privately motivated.
As far as individuals other than the village chief are concerned they are more likely to understand how their own world works and if they don't have that knowledge then it is their responsibility to obtain that information. He or the administration of the village could take up that responsibility with what I've already outlined, but he definitely should not have gone about it the way that he did. Basically anything else would have been more appropriate- including leaving it be until it was a salient concern.