Jasmine Goodspeed
Hassanamisco Nipmuc, Founding member of Ohketeau Cultural Center, Indigenous storyteller and local historian
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Jasmine Rochelle Goodspeed(She/They) has been working within her community (the Hassanamisco Nipmuc People) since childhood. As one of the founding members of the Ohketeau Cultural Center in Ashfield, Massachusetts, she has worked closely with surrounding Indigenous Nations and historical societies, hosting events throughout New England. As an actor, singer, director, and playwright, Jasmine has extensive experience in productions focused on theater within the realm of historical truth telling and communal catharsis.
In 2018, she wrote, produced, and acted in her own musical titled “1675" at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, recounting the tragedy of Nipmuc, Wampanoag, and Massachusett Native people sent to Deer Island during King Philip’s War. From 2013-2017, She produced “Free Shakespeare in the Park” at Northampton’s Look Park. For the Plymouth 400 celebration, She worked with the Wampanoag Nation and Theatre Royal Plymouth on a play concerning Indigenous History in Massachusetts. This production, titled "We Are The Land," told the story of colonization from an Indigenous perspective, bringing forward important markers of Massachusetts state history that were previously untold.
From 2022 to 2023, she worked with Historic Northampton and “Plays in Place” in a successful (sold out) series of place-based plays centered around Northampton history. She authored an original drama about one of the enslaved women – “Rose” – in Reverend Jonathan Edwards' household. This work is continuing forward with a series of plays focused on Indigenous figures in Northampton which would be developed for the Massachusetts 250th anniversary project.
Recently Jasmine has worked as an Indigenous History Consultant for the town of Sudbury, Massachusetts, through the Goodnow Library’s “Indigenous History” initiative. She has presented at local libraries and schools, teaching Indigenous history. She has published plays and articles as well as created maps. Her research places her both with historical documents, and moving through the Eastern Woodlands to better understand the story of colonization, and how to understand the way that this history comes together to tell a human story.
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