Putting aside her UFC stardom, Ronda Rousey took a trip to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota to offer her support to the Dakota Access Pipeline project protesters. The former UFC women’s bantamweight champion reportedly brought a wide range of fresh fruits and vegetables along with bread, tents and a stove than burns wood.
Olympic judo star Pauline Macias took to Instagram to share a photo of her with Rousey at the Dakota Access Pipeline protest site. Macias called her trip with Rousey as “an incredible experience.”
"I had one of the best road trips of my life with @rondarousey to deliver supplies to the protesters at Standing Rock!," Macias wrote.
Even activist Linda Black Elk said the UFC star told her she would come back and "get pepper sprayed alongside everyone else." The Standing Rock Sioux, the group that filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for approving the Dakota Access Pipeline, pointed out that the project will likely bring adverse effects to their "environmental and economic well-being, and would damage and destroy sites of great historic, religious and cultural significance.”
According to the tribe, they also have fears over the pipeline’s effects on their water supply, including contamination of the Missouri River. Its supporters have then protested at the contamination site after President Donald Trump gave his go-signal for the pipeline. Supporters of the Dakota Access pipeline claim that it will be the most nature-friendly and cost-efficient means of crude oil transportation. On the otherhand, former President Barack Obama previously stopped the project from being carried out during his second term.
As for Rousey, she was spotted quietly bringing supplies to the protesters; the 29-year-old mixed martial artist had a past disagreement with Trump when he claimed that she had declared support for him. Rousey immediately denied such claims and a Twitter war followed. In 2015, Trump expressed his pleasure over Rousey losing to Holly Holm, tweeting that, “She’s not a nice person!”
