While those deemed arts-and-crafters by festival organizers were given use of an open-air tent city at a downtown Holiday Inn, high-end sculptures and tapestries were displayed for dealers and wholesalers at a plush room across town at the Hyatt Regency and the two camps rarely encountered each other.

Artists were told they had to leave the Hyatt during displays of drum dancing, were stopped from offering carving displays there and were excluded from $100-a-plate gala dinners in favor of rich, white gallery owners and their best customers. While those at the Hyatt had 24-hour security guards watching over $5,000 sculptures, the Holiday Inn exhibitors were given an outside pavilion that had to be taken down every night causing artists to lose the last day of the festival because it rained.

"It was almost as though they didn't want to see the scrubby little native folk in their ball caps and jeans," said one outraged festival attendee who did not want to be named for fear it would hurt business in future festivals.

"There was definitely a strata there, between the high-end pieces that (organizers) considered fine art, and the rest that they considered just folk art."

Mary Okheena, a Holman print-maker who travelled to the festival with Winnie Cockney of Inuvik and Eli Nasogaluak of Sachs Harbor, said members of the artist's camp were made to feel unwelcome in the main venue.

"All the people we were around were really nice, but it was like we couldn't participate in these other activities."

"We are the ones who put money in the pockets of these gallery owners but it felt like they didn't want us around. They had drummers and dancers at the Hyatt but they told us we couldn't stay around to watch them perform."

Okheena added, she did not sell a lot of her prints and saw few dealers and wholesalers in the tent city and while she enjoyed meeting other native artists, she said the treatment of the artists by festival organizers left her unhappy.

Festival organizers say the two venues were geared for different crowds and made the distinction between what they call "museum-quality" native art at the Hyatt and arts and crafts in the tent city.

"Obviously, what was on display at the mall was high quality but not on the level of what was displayed at the Hyatt," said Christopher Ryall, Arizona tourism's Canadian representative.

He acknowledged there had been tensions between the two camps.

"There was reaction on both sides. The arts and crafts vendors wanted to be part of the event at the Hyatt and take part in some of the activities there, but some of those at the Hyatt liked the separation."

Dennis Hillman, executive director of the festival, said galleries were charged a lot more than individual artists for display space. Those in the tent city still sold well, he said, noting they had 15,000 visitors on the second-last day of the festival and would have topped that on Sunday had it not rained.

"There was free admission to the plaza and all the excitement and hoopla that surrounded it... It was to their benefit to be apart."

Still, he said next year he wants the two camps to tour each other's venues so the dealers can see what the artisans are doing and so the artisans can see the work the big hitters of the native art world are producing.

Judith Venaas, who works for the territorial government's resources, wildlife and economic development department and who assisted the Inuvialuit with their booth, said the idea of splitting the artists may have been a good idea but the way it was done was clumsy.

"It was almost like there was a segregation between the two groups," she said.

"It was a good idea, but it could have been done in a different manner."

The Inuvialuit made some contacts that could lead to future sales, but not as many as if the wholesalers had mingled with the artists themselves, she said.

"There was some really wonderful stuff (the dealers) may have been interested in, but they never saw it."