On March 8, 1970, about 100 members and sympathizers of United Indian People's Council (later United Indians of All Tribes Foundation, or UIATF) occupied Fort Lawton, a 1,100-acre army post in Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood. They were inspired by the passage of a bill signed by President Richard Nixon, which granted non-federal entities the ability to obtain surplus federal lands for below market value. The Native group wanted to create a cultural center for Indigenous peoples, while the City of Seattle wanted to build a city park, on the recently decommissioned surplus lands of Fort Lawton. After long negotiations and Congressional intervention, the protest ultimately resulted in a solution permitting development of both an Indian cultural center and a municipal park--Discovery Park--on the Fort Lawton site. The Daybreak Star Cultural Center, run by United Indians of All Tribes, opened in 1977, and as of 2021, continues to serve as an "urban base for Native Americans in the Seattle Area," by providing cultural, educational, and social services to local Indigenous communities.

Following the March 8 occupation, UIATF supporters maintained a three-week vigil outside the front gates of Fort Lawton. This image shows Robert "Bob" Satiacum (1929-1991), one of the protest leaders, standing near a tent during the vigil outside Fort Lawton. Mr. Satiacum was a Puyallup tribal leader and an advocate of native treaty fishing rights in the United States whose 1954 arrest resulted in the landmark Boldt Decision, which held that treaties signed between Native tribes and the federal government in the 1850s entitled the tribes to fifty percent of the total fish harvest. In 1991 Mr. Satiacum died of a heart attack in Canada while being held pending extradition to the U.S. for a previous criminal conviction.

Caption information source: "How Indians Would Use Fort," by Frank Herbert, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 22, 1970, page 27.
Caption information source: "Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center opens its doors on May 13, 1977," by Antonia Kelleher, HistoryLink.org Essay 11237.
Caption information source: "Fort Lawton military police clash with Native American and other protesters in the future Discovery Park on March 8, 1970," by Patrick McRoberts and Kit Oldham, HistoryLink.org Essay 5513.
Caption information source: "By Right of Discovery: United Indians of All Tribes Retakes Fort Lawton, 1970," by Lossom Allen, the Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project, University of Washington, https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/FtLawton_takeover.htm