All human societies have constructed indigenous strategies for responding to human need. While there are calls for social work to embrace diversity, there remains dissatisfaction with the hegemonic spread of Western social work. Analysis reveals different cultural orientations in a number of contexts and suggests that the Western context is indigenous defined by values and characteristics that are inconsistent with the other cultural orientations. This reality not only gives rise to serious questions regarding the applicability of Western social work to other cultural orientations, but also points to the need to develop new skills, values and theories for social work.