Unsettling Mormonism
  • Home
  • Posts
    • Scroll
  • Essays
    • Mormonism and Indigenous Assimilation
    • Eugenic Family Values in Mormonism
    • Mormon Mythistries
  • About
  • Home
  • Posts
    • Scroll
  • Essays
    • Mormonism and Indigenous Assimilation
    • Eugenic Family Values in Mormonism
    • Mormon Mythistries
  • About

Unsettling Mormonism

an archive of ​unsettling histories, mythistories, and mystories
from U.S. & Mormon settler colonialism, white supremacy, and imperialism
​

Ensign Peak Advisors, Ensign Peak Park & the Deseret Flag

6/11/2022

0 Comments

 
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.
Picture
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.
Picture
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.
Picture
Isaiah 18:3, an inspiration for the name of the peak and church owned investment company.
Picture
Merriam-Webster definition of ensign
Picture
“Ensign” is even the name of this church’s main magazine.
Picture
flag of the State of Deseret*
Picture
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.​
Picture
Amazon listing for Deseret flag
Picture
"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).
Picture
A twitter post from a DezNat user
Picture
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--
Picture
“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
Picture
“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. 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    I am nicholas b jacobsen, an artist, researcher, historian, educator, and organizer. I am a trans-non binary Euro-settler raised in the Nuwu lands of so-called Utah. My family has been Mormon and Utahn for as long as either of those concepts have existed. My ancestors sacrificed everything--their identities, homelands, jobs, health, & safety to become Mormon, Utahn, U.S. American, & white--to settler their Zion. I take it as my personal responsibility to unsettle what my ancestors settled. and to help my fellow settlers do the same through writing, art, and community building.

    Archives

    June 2022

    Categories

    All
    American Exceptionalism / Constitutionalism
    Anti Communism / Imperialism
    Art / Personal
    Brigham Young
    BYU
    Curse Of Cain / Ham
    Dallin H. Oaks
    End Times / Latter Days
    Ezra Taft Benson
    Joseph Smith
    J. Reuben Clark
    Lamanites And Indigeneity
    Pure / White Supremacy
    Settler Colonialism / Zionism
    Spencer W. Kimball
    The Family Proclamation / Marriage / The Gay Agenda
    Under The Banner Of Heaven
    Utah's Dixie
    W. Cleon Skousen

    RSS Feed