Ensign Peak Advisors, Ensign Peak Park & the Deseret Flag

Ensign Peak Advisors is the investment management company for assets of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Both Ensign Peak Advisors and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are trademarks owned by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. Intellectual Reserve, Inc. holds the church's intellectual property, including copyrights and trademarks and is wholly owned and operated by the Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Like many other billionaires this church’s wealth grew by $2.4 billion over the pandemic

• Top 25 stocks / 2021
• PORTFOLIO TOTAL VALUE: $46.513.786.000
• Apple - $2,091,347,000
• Microsoft - $2,069,005,000
• Amazon - $1,405,773,000
• Google (Alphabet) - $1,405,773,000
• Facebook - $1,301,601,000
• JPMorgan Chase - $1,301,601,000
• UnitedHealth Group - S670,806,000
• Johnson & Johnson - $612,603,000
• Tesla Motors - $433,078,000
  

These investments have made this church the second most wealthy religious organization in the world. These investments also actively contribute to climate chaos and the sixth extinction (gotta bring those latter-days), oil and gas extraction, Indigenous land rights abuses, child-enslavement, worker exploitation, predatory lending, profit from healthcare, and outright poison people. These are the contemporary money handlers who make Jesus table-flipping mad.

wwjd?

If this church were a nation (say like a nation called Deseret) and it’s current wealth were its GDP, it would be around the 70th most wealthy nation in the world. This list contains 213 nations, which hypothetically ranks this church in the top ⅓ most wealthy nations.

​This wealth was originally created through the collection of tithing. Mormon practitioners must pay 10%+ of their income to be "worthy" members and have access to the rituals that ensure Mormon salvation and eternal life with one’s earthly family. 

Ensign Peak Advisors is named after Ensign Peak. 

Ensign Peak is a hilltop park on public lands in the foothills near downtown Salt Lake City, Utah. It is approximately one mile north of the Utah State Capitol and sits almost directly behind it. Two days after arriving in the Timpanogos lands, on July 26, 1847, Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders climbed this hill and gave the peak its present name. Thus, the hill is given religious significance in Mormon history and symbolism.

Isaiah 18:3, an inspiration for the name of the peak and church owned investment company.

Merriam-Webster definition of ensign

“Ensign” is even the name of this church’s main magazine.

flag of the State of Deseret*

The Flag of the United States, Flag of Utah, and the Deseret Flag at Ensign Peak and one of the "ensigns" flown at this city gov owned park on stolen Shoshone land.*

The Deseret flag is the ensign of this Mormon separatist theocratic ethnostate that fought against the U.S., was never recognized by the U.S., & directly stole Indigenous homelands through genocide, massacre, and assimilation.

And much like the more well-known flag of separatist nation who fought against, and was never recognized by the U.S. (the confederate battle flag) there are Deseret Nationalist (or DezNat) white supremacists who want to bring this nation back into existence.​

Amazon listing for Deseret flag

"Brigham would be proud." DezNat users often use BYDNW (Brigham Young did nothing wrong) a play on the more common white-supremacist HDNW (Hitler did nothing wrong).

A twitter post from a DezNat user

Hang your two settler colonial religious ethnostate flags together. They even have matching colors.

So what exactly is a religious flag with white supremacist ties doing in a government owned park?

I don't know. That's a question for the SLC council.

---

–And a moment to acknowledge
that the US flag is also a symbol
of white supremacist violence
​to many people--

“What is the proper way to display the US flag?” - Dread Scott

"To some people, it's the flag carried by the cavalry that enacted genocide on Native Americans, that dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and napalm on Vietnam. It's the flag worn by cops who shoot people in the back.
It's the flag of a country pillaging the world."

- Dread Scott

“Interwoven” - Sonya Clark

“The US flag is as much a symbol of oppression and terrorism against Black people as the Confederate flag. The dehumanization and oppression of Black people is not only built into the Constitution, it's an American past-time that takes place under the Stars and Stripes."

- Kirsten West Savalionva

*You may notice that the colors are inverted: this flag may or may not have been the flag of Deseret, the only source for the description of this flag was from an anti-Mormon territorial trader named Maguire, who was passing thru to make sure that Brigham Young, "the old devil," was dead.