The “hippie” counterculture of the mid-1960s to early 1970s is often said to have emerged as a response to the advent of a consumerist culture and a technocratic modernity experienced by some as alienating and artificial. In a context of military aggression and imperialism, of increasing social, racial, and ecological crises, the youth of the counterculture came to see the modern Western condition as deeply inauthentic, and constructed contrasting notions of desirable authenticity. This paper demonstrates that hippies’ longing for the authentic underlay their perception of Indigenous people, sparking a wave of interest in and appropriation of Native cultures. An analysis of “Indian”-inspired hippie clothing, iconography, spirituality and sociality therefore reveals that Indian play (P. Deloria) was essential to the construction of personal and collective identities within the countercultural movement, especially as Indianness became closely associated with authenticity. Because of counterculturalists’ selective interest, avoidance of Indigenous people, and reliance on textual sources, many have stated that, in their quest for authenticity, hippies have debuted a westernized, generic, and inauthentic version of “Indian” culture. The question of what constitutes authentic cultural lore is therefore central to this study, and is also of profound importance during the Sixties, at a moment when Indigenous people of the United States were renegotiating their cultural heritage through the rediscovery of traditional religions, in an attempt to redefine what constituted authentic Indianness.