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MAHWAH, N.J. — A knee-high pile of rocks sits in a far corner of a gated community set among rolling hills known as the Polo Club.

To the Ramapough Lenape Nation, which owns a patch of land in the gated community and piled the stones here, it’s an altar.

To the Township of Mahwah, the 15-foot-long mound is a violation of town code. And since 2017, the town has regularly issued flurries of citations: for the rock pile, for a collection of fallen trees tipped upright and arranged in a circle, and for using a residentially zoned plot for religious use, even when no one is there.

So many summonses — the Ramapough estimated they receive up to $12,500 a week in fines — that the town says the tribe owes more than $4 million.