Treaties and Indigenous Peoples is an edited version of Professor Ian Brownlie's 1990 Robb Lectures, delivered at the University of Auckland in the sesquicentennial year of the establishment of New Zealand as a British colony.

Whereas most sesquicentennial writing necessarily deals with Treaty and related problems in the immediate context of New Zealand law and politics, Professor Brownlie, bringing the external perspective and the expertise of an eminent academic and practising international lawyer, deals with those problems in the international context of the rights of indigenous peoples.

The New Zealand constitutional background to the work is provided by Professor Brookfield's annotations.