The idea to form the Native American Credit Union Coalition came about after Helen Mickel, president/CEO the $224 Tongass Federal Credit Union in Ketchikan, Alaska, and Denise Hudson, Tongass' assistant vice president of consumer lending, traveled to attend a conference of Oweesta, the longest standing Native CDFI intermediary offering financial products and development services exclusively to Native CDFIs and Native communities.

“After we walked into the [conference] room and Denise said - with this big old smile on her face as she looks around the room - these people look like they could be my aunties and uncles and cousins," Mickel said. Hudson is a proud Tsimshian, or sometimes spelled Ts’msyen, an Alaska Native tribe, living on the only Native American Reserve in Alaska. Hudson's community of Metlakatla, on the Annette Island Reserve, was founded in the late 1800s after some of the local tribal members relocated from Metlakatla, British Columbia in Canada.