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Although social work students in Taiwan generally tend to have positive attitudes towards the Taiwanese Indigenous peoples, a considerable proportion of these students have undecided or unfavourable attitudes. A total of 1,919 first- to fourth-year social work students from 24 social work-related departments across Taiwan completed a purpose-designed questionnaire incorporating Indigenous-related education, contact, consciousness, and demographic items. A regression analysis of the survey results reveals robust evidence that ethnic identity, having Indigenous friends, empathy towards Indigenous people and one's position on the political spectrum affect attitudes. However, multicultural education, including Indigenous-related courses and ethnicity-related courses in college, and collective guilt are not significant factors influencing the attitudes of social work students in Taiwan. These findings have implications for social work educators in countries that provide social work services to Indigenous people. IMPLICATIONS Teaching activities should be designed to increase social work students' opportunities to make friends with Indigenous people, emphasise core social work tenets in the classroom and develop students' empathy towards Indigenous people. Conducting future research to investigate the factors that influence social work students' attitudes towards Indigenous people in other countries may be fruitful given the unique interaction histories between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]