Into Thin Air – Fred Yellow Old Woman | Family returns to Tk’emlúps for answers in sudden disappearance

The 54-year-old was last seen around 10:30 p.m. on June 14, 2011. He and his girlfriend travelled from Alberta to BC for a funeral and had been staying with friends at a property in the 600-block of Shuswap Road on the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc reserve.

“I guess they went to bed that night. And at 5:00 a.m. both doors were open, left open, and Fred was gone. Never seen again,” his sister, Flora Royal, says.

However, all of Yellow Old Woman’s belongings were left behind, deepening the mystery.

“He wore false teeth, so he wore dentures as well. That was left. His bank card, his cell phone, his clothes. He quite literally would have had to have walked out in just his underwear because his shoes were still at the residence,” says Evans. “When I had come out the second time to help with the search, the story just does not add up.”

The family was told by RCMP there was a chance Fred had gone over to the riverbanks, and may have fallen in. But searches of the river and its banks have never turned up any sign of him.

“I’m desperately trying to get answers. Only the people who were with him that night know what happened,” says Royal.

“I know somebody knows. From day one when he went missing and piecing together information I got.”

Royal has made the trip to Kamloops each year and followed up with the RCMP. She’s now passed the torch to her and Fred’s nephew, Evans Yellow Old Woman. Evans feels in the initial days of Fred’s disappearance, there should have been more action taken, and more of the land beyond the river should have been searched.

“When we had come out, we had to write our leadership back home on Siksika Nation and they sent their search boats to come search the river. And so we’ve had a lot of support from our nation because, as my aunt said, he was well known back home,” explains Evans.

Yellow Old Woman was a driver for the band’s disability services back home, and at the time he went missing, he had been raising some of his grandchildren.

“He played a pivotal role in our family,” Evans describes, “He did have a hard life. He went to Indian Residential School. But despite everything that had happened growing up and the experiences that he had, he really truly did love his family. And we love him very much. Which is why we come back every year at the anniversary of the time he went missing.”

Fred was one of 14 siblings, part of a large, tight-knit family.

“He was very close with his children. And him going missing really impacted them and really affected the trajectory of their lives,” notes Evans. “Two of them are no longer with us. And our family since has… it’s shaken us to our core. Had that not happened, I think things would have looked completely different for his family.”

Fred and Flora’s mother, Eve, passed in early 2025, still searching for an answer about what happened to her child.

“When we lost her (my grandmother) recently, we know that they were reunited but she did pray every day for him to come home and so we just want that for ourselves, that closure,” he adds.

The unanswered grief has left the Yellow Old Woman family with significant mental strain, and ultimately, disappointment.

“The frustration around the lack of resources when it comes to missing and murdered Indigenous people really plays a factor in all of this as well,” stresses Yellow Old Woman. “There definitely needs to be more resources when it comes to missing and murdered Indigenous people here in Canada. We’re all familiar with the stories that have happened. Especially here in B.C. The Highway of Tears and just that our stories don’t get out there.”

And while Fred’s family members live more than a ten-hour drive away from the Tk’emlups area, they have pledged to come back for him every year.

“To remind the RCMP and to remind those in Kamloops that we will be coming back every year until we get an answer. Until we can bring him home.”

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To anonymously report a crime or submit a tip, Kamloops, Crime Stoppers can be reached at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477). Tips can also be submitted anonymously through the BC Crime Stoppers website.

by Dylana Kneeshaw

Into Thin Air – Fred Yellow Old Woman | Family returns to Tk’emlúps for answers in sudden disappearance

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