Loss of Native American Languages Affects Our Understanding of the Natural World

I recall stumbling upon a linguistic feature more common to native American languages called grammatical evidentals, where certain statements required some sort of marker which indicates how the information is known to the speaker: whether by direct experience (I saw the rain), or hearsay (I was told it's raining), etc.

I have considered on occasion that this would be useful, as a great deal of internet arguments stem from the fact that English allows for the construction of sentences which state subjective experience as absolute truth.

Quick example from starting to learn Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwe : there different color-names for living things and non-living things. The brown fur of a squirrel has a different quality to it than the brown of dirt, and the language reflects that more readily than English.

Gaeilge/Irish has more-specific terms for rain, at least according to The Blindboy Podcast (he wrote the forward to the recent edition of the Hiberno-English Dictionary). I try to describe in English the differences between the rain of the Midwest (big, cold drops that hit hard) and the Pacific Northwest (rain so light you don't need a raincoat), and can imagine cultures eventually making up easily-spoken words for common phenomena.

> In Hawaiian traditions and belief systems, for example, the tree snails were connected to “the realm of the gods.” Hawaiian royalty revered them, which protected them from overharvesting.

Having learned this piece of trivia, I don't feel like my understanding of the natural world has moved an inch.

While there are important reasons to preserve these languages, I'm having a hard time buying this one.